Thursday, March 12, 2009

Check out ChubbyBrain.com

ChubbyBrain recently contacted Duke.  From the front of the website, looks like there might be some value for Duke entrepreneurs.

-Howie

As you read this, scientists in Tel Aviv are developing clean water technologies that will help people from Tunisia to Thailand. And programmers in Mumbai are working with venture capitalists in Menlo Park on a mobile application that will connect people from Buenos Aires to Brisbane. 

Right now, an entrepreneur in South Africa is using mobile phones and the web to fight injustice in Zaire and Zimbabwe. And researchers at a Sydney biotech firm are developing cancer therapeutics that will help patients from Boston to Berlin lead better lives.

We often hear and know in our gut that our future depends on the energy of entrepreneurs and the investors that back them coming up with brilliant ideas that solve our problems - both big and small. Yet amazingly, information and insights about these innovative startups remains notoriously difficult to find or is only accessible to a limited few who can afford subscriptions that can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

ChubbyBrain was conceived by a small group of individuals to change this. 

With the appropriate and thoughtful application of technology, we have set out to make information and insights on these innovative startups (everything from clean tech to nanotech to healthcare to web2.0 to mobile to social entrepreneurship) more accessible to investors, startups, corporations, and aspiring entrepreneurs alike. 

As we believe that innovation often happens at the boundary of different disciplines, our long-term hope is that as the platform grows with your help and contributions, we will enable experts, entrepreneurs and investors from different fields and geographies to come together to channel their energies into solving more of these big and small problems.

In the short-term, our primary hope is you’ll explore the ChubbyBrain platform and that it will become a go to resource for the information and insights you seek. We also hope you’ll share it with others in your network as the value of the insights and information on ChubbyBrain goes up as the diversity of opinions and perspectives on the platform increases. Of course, we look forward to and welcome your contributions – whether it is writing reviews, commenting on others reviews and/or adding/editing startups to the database. 

And of course, we look forward to improving ChubbyBrain for you over time based on your needs and suggestions. We always welcome your ideas and suggestions and will do our best to get back to you at the earliest.

Warm regards,
The ChubbyBrain Team

1 comment:

jonathan.sherry said...

Dear Howie-

I am one of the co-founders of ChubbyBrain so wanted to say thanks for letting the Duke entrepreneurship community know about ChubbyBrain.

For those within the community looking to research potential funding/investment sources, we have 1100+ investor profiles (VCs, angels, etc) along with details of their portfolio companies.

Investor search can be found here.

We also have 14,700 primarily angel- and venture-backed startups on the platform across a wide variety of sectors (green/clean tech, biotech, medical devices, web2.0, nanotech, social enterprise, mobile, etc). These represent potential employers for job-seekers. For existing and aspiring entrepreneurs, this information is a way to understand market trends and identify potential partners and competitors.

We also encourage those with expertise to review startups and comment on the viability of their business models, technology, etc. We currently have 800+ user submitted reviews of startups on CB.

If you have any questions or ideas re: the platform or if we can help you or others in the Duke entrepreneurship community in any way, please don't hesitate to reach out to me directly (my email is below). We especially enjoy interviewing startup founders and hearing about the interesting things they are working on so would encourage anyone interested on this front to reach out.

Thanks again. We look forward to working with you and Duke in 2009.

Regards,
Jonathan Sherry
jsherry(at)chubbybrain(dot)com
www.chubbybrain.com