VatorSplash's Start-Up Innovators: From Education & Games to Money Transfer & eCommerce

Vator (short for innovator) is one of the largest business networks dedicated to entrepreneurship in the U.S.  Founded and run by industry veteran, Bambi Francisco (am a fan of her work), VatorSplash is an off-shoot within the Vator umbrella, which are evening events held in San Francisco highlighting start-ups and early adopter inovators.

The latest one was in late September and as always, it was held at the very cool and hip Cafe du Nord on Market Street, a small and eclectic space with character in San Francisco's Castro District.

In addition to the VatorSplash events, Vator consists of Vator.tv,  a leading platform for entrepreneurs and innovators to connect and learn from one another. Vator.tv has more than 75,000 members and high-tech companies, using the service to effectively communicate with their partners, investors, media and customers.  

Below is a shot of the Glancee team, yes...another social network. Their pitch? Remember the feeling of talking to someone new, realizing that you have a dear friend in common and that you both love that artist only you know about? Glancee helps you discover these hidden connections and meet with people important to you. Using their app, you can explore the profiles of people nearby and be notified when somebody has common friends or mutual interests. 

Below is Webdoc co-founder Vincent Borel doing a demo of their social platform, which is designed to empower people to express themselves and interact with others online quickly and easily. Imagine mixing any kind of media you want (videos, photos (inc slides shows), applications, text, and more onto a white blank canvas simply by dragging and dropping. Then, once you have your "creation", you can simply embed it anywhere - your blog, website, as a Facebook landing page and more. What's so slick about it is that its so easy to use and quick to create.

VatorSplash' top ten finalists include: MindGames, an app which builds trivia and knowledge-based games for fans of sports, music, politics and more. Fans compete with others fans and against their archrivals for pride, prizes and fun.

Nooche is a peer-to-peer money transfer system, which allows you to easily and quickly send money to friends. Nooch enables payments through your smartphone, whether its to settle a bet or just send a birthday gift in a matter of seconds.

BuildingLayer is an intuitive mapping and way-finding solution for indoor spaces. Social Annex helps eCommerce sites monetize social media through engagement, so influential visitors can drive additional referral sales from their friends/followers.

Capseo uses crowdsourcing to deliver on-performance Web marketing through its community of influencers. Capeseo's algorithms authomatically analyze a website, building a list of tasks in order to find the best skills available to improve its influence.

Lastly, StUdill.com (talk about a complicated spelling and name to remember - c'mon guys), is attempting to establish itself as the first nationwide on-line college textbook exchange service. They transform the college textbook trading paradigm  by offering a resolution to the historically high cost of college textbooks. (website is currently password protected but should be opening up soon).

Speakers and judges included David Blumberg, Russell Bertuccelli, Laura Bushnell, Noah Doyle, Josh Felser, Mark Goines, David Hornik, Richard Hsu, Brian Jacobs, Joe Kraus, Woody Marshall, Eghosa Omoigui, Cindy Padnos, Andrew Ross, Adam Smith, Alex Rosen, Bill Tai, Rob Theis, and Geoff Yang among others.