7 early stage startups to watch in 2014
Watching the skies, keeping our ears to the ground – paying attention to the newest, most exciting startups is a pretty big part of what we do here at The Next Web.
But now and again, we like to collaborate with other companies that share our focus. So, we teamed up with Beta List – a site that documents early stage and pre-launch startups – to bring you a shortlist of some of the most exciting startups that have just launched, or are just about to launch in one form or another.
Some are further down the road than others, but all are early stage startups you might want to keep an eye on in the year ahead.
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Updatey
We caught up with Updatey’s founder Benjamin Dell to find out what he was cooking up.
What is Updatey and who’s it for?
“Project tracking, presented beautifully. Simply, manage, track and visualize the progress of your project; share the results with your team, clients and stakeholders. [We] focus on presenting typical project information and ’noise’ in a meaningful and elegant way, Updatey is perfect for teams that see the value in keeping everyone on the same page and providing timelines, reports and information that almost anyone can understand.”
How is it different to your competitors?
“Our primary objective is to create a suite of tools that anyone within the team – whether they’re a developer, a project coordinator or a client – can understand and make use of. We’re fanatic about ensuring that when someone adds information to a project, no matter whether it’s a deadline, a task, a comment or a status update, that it is presented back to the wider team in a clean, beautiful and intuitive way.
“And this, it turns out, is quite an important focus to have, as it can have quite a transformative effect on the way that you and your wider team think about and engage with your project.”
“By contrast, you only need to look at a random selection of existing project management tools and you’ll quickly find that the way project information and key metrics are presented is far from elegant or easy to digest.”
How big is your team and how have you funded the project so far?
“We’re a small team of 5, based in the UK and privately funded. Although we’re not actively looking for funding or investment, I am conscious that with the right financial injection and partnership, Updatey’s ambitions could be realized far sooner – I like to keep my ears to the ground in case such an opportunity were to present itself.”
What stage are you at now with the launch?
“We unveiled the beta ‘badge’ back in October 2013. During the 3 months that ensued, we attracted over 3,500 beta signups and an incredible response from the community. We officially moved out of beta and into revenue mode in mid January 2014. We’re now heavily focused on delivering the next phase – including enhanced project management capabilities, in a typically ‘Updatey’ way, of course.”
➤ Updatey