Meet the Startups That Will Transform Our Cities in the Next Decade

“Meet the startups, people & organizations that will transform our cities in the next decade.”

That is the invitation on the website of Smart City Startups for their 2015 Festival and Summit taking place in Wynwood, Miami April 22 – 24. “The purpose of the Festival is to raise broad awareness of what the leading UrbanTech startups are up to and to spur new relationships “ and will include demonstartions of the “100 of the most promising startup solutions to city problems in areas ranging from water and waste to transport and sustainable buildings.”

The Summit will bring together an anticipated 250 – 300 investors, industry partners, city officials, urban leaders, and advisors. There will also be a “core group of the leading UrbanTech founders to… share experiences, knowledge, and relationships.”

Stonly Baptiste and Shaun Abramson are co-creators of the Smart City Startups Festival and Summit. Baptiste and Abramson are also co-founders of Urban.us, a Miami-based startup funding and mentorship network. Before the 2014 inaugural Festival and Summit, Abrahamson wrote:

We want to make sure that some of the most promising founders of smart city companies can connect with the very best people who can support them. So this is why we’ve organized Smart City Startups. Beyond helping founders, we want investors and governments to understand how the smart city startup ecosystem is evolving. We want them to understand all of the resources to help companies that want to solve tough city problems. Like all gatherings, our main objective is to introduce people who have similar interests and goals so that they can help one another.

Smart City Startups 2015 will take place at The Light Box at Goldman Warehouse, located at 404 NW 26 ST, Miami, FL 33127. On April 22 there will be a tour of Wynwood followed by a Welcome dinner. April 23 will include start-up showcases and demonstrations, and the “Founder Lightning Talks.” April 24 will feature break-out discussion groups and panel presentations. For more information and tickets, go to the Smart City Startups 2015 website.

Companies participating in the 2015 Smart City Startups are:

• APPCityLife: We empower cities, groups and individuals worldwide to deliver valuable civic solutions for their own community.
• MuniRent: Equipment and service sharing for public agencies
• Future Motion – Onewheel: pioneering new entrant to the board sports world
• Vizalytics Technology: We bridge the digital divide for local businesses. We empower them with insight.
• Mapistry: an easy to use mapping tool that allows scientists, civil engineers, and city planners to quickly produce elegant maps.
• Astro: We build smart devices that make the connected home more accessible, more affordable, and easy to use.
• Zuli: Control your lights and appliances from your smartphone using Zuli Smartplugs and smart home technology.
• Vinli: Making cars smarter, safer and more fun
• Placemeter: Imagine never again waiting in line at the grocery store. Placemeter is making it possible, and will pay you up to $50/month to help.
• AmigoCloud: a mobile mapping platform for GIS professionals
• Architizer: search the world’s architecture & the products behind it.
• Aunt Bertha: Find food, health, housing, job training programs and more, anywhere.
• BlueLight: The app that makes 911 as smart as your phone.
• Blueline Grid: Unified communication and location services for government
• BRCK: rugged internet for people and things
• Cityzenith: Make data in cities useable and useful (in 3D)
• Civic Insight: Harness the power of information to build thriving communities.
• CIVICO: Places, events and news according to my tastes and location
• Cliqk: Solving the smart home’s last mile.
• DASH: Connect your car to your smartphone, and unlock enhanced performance, cost savings and social driving.
• Hammerhead: Find your way and discover new ones on your bike.
• KIWI.KI: KIWI opens doors. Sure, intelligent, comfortable. Without looking, without buttons, without a key.
• Lagoon Systems, Inc.: Discover your home water use
• LocalData: Better data makes better cities. Collecting and analyzing it should be easy.
• LOVELAND Technologies: Putting the world online one property at a time.
• Mapillary: Crowdsourced street level photos. Discover places, get inspired, and capture the world around you
• NextRequest: Open public records
• Offload Labs: Making sustainable living easy, affordable, accessible and fun
• ParkJockey: book parking for everything you do.
• PublocStuff: Get stuff fixed in your community with this easy to use mobile and web applications.
• PWRstation: Solar power. Simply delivered.
• Rachio: We’re collectively saving millions of gallon of water while keeping yards healthy and looking great.
• Revivn: We refurbish the electronics we collect to create computer labs for youths in need.
• SeamlessDocs: The most seamless way to a paperless government
• SeeClickFix: Report neighborhood issues and see them get fixed.
• Skycatch: intelligent, scalable and fully autonomous data capture solution for cities (and others)
• SmartProcure: See who buys exactly what you sell
• Transitmix: a modern mapping tool for planning transit
• Valet Anywhere: Valet Anywhere will park your car the moment you arrive at your destination
• ViKua: dedicated to generating solutions to problems relating to traffic, transport and security, under the broad concept of smart cities.
• WhatUpBridge: tracks local infrastructure and notifies you of delays affecting your commute.
• Paracosm: We build 3D technologies to power the next generation of devices, help machines understand the physical world and improve virtual and augmented reality experiences.
• E-Chronic Technologies: Dynamically control window reflectivity and save energy.
• Social Bicycles: We make Social Bicycles that people love to ride. Our members can find bikes at hub locations and reserve them from the web, our mobile app, or directly from the bike itself.
• ZBoard: The best weight-sensing electric skateboard we’ve ever built. Simply lean forward to go and lean back to stop.
• Bandwagon: Bandwagon makes it easy to share rides in taxis and car services — matching passengers in cities, at events, and airport taxi lines — and providing shared taxi hailing in cities throughout the world.
• Ohmconnect: Get paid to improve your energy use. Ohmconnect pays you to reduce your electricity use when dirty and expensive power plants turn on nearby.
• WeatherCloud: crowd sources weather and road condition information by equipping trucks and automobiles with proprietary weather sensors to produce the largest, most accurate, surface weather model on the planet.
• HandUp: Donate directly to a homeless neighbor in need. 100% of your donation reaches the person you intend. Donations are redeemed through case managers at our nonprofit partners. We believe everyone deserves the opportunity to reach their full potential — sometimes all it takes is a HandUp.
• Chai Energy: Do you know where you’re wasting energy? Chai does. The Chai Energy mobile app shows you exactly where you are wasting energy and money in your own home.
• Carvoyant: Connected car data can help consumers save money on repair work and insurance policies alike. Additionally, a connected car provide peace of mind when a vehicle is valet parked as well as when a teen (or senior) driver is out on the road. Mostly, connected car data can help consumers’ vehicles communicate with the world around them.
• Rally Bus: the fun, safe, and green way to get to games, concerts, festivals, and rallies.
• OpportunitySpace: an information-rich marketplace that helps you discover and invest in untapped real estate opportunities.
• URBAN4M: an urban analytics company that converts raw data into meaningful, hyper-local geo-information. Our services and data target businesses of all sizes, institutions and government agencies, as well as individual users seeking a decision support tool.
• WHILL: WHILL Model A moves seamlessly throughout your life and goes effortlessly where you want to go. It is the combination of both high performance and unparalleled beauty. WHILL Model A was engineered and designed to seamlessly integrate within the various rhythms of your life, whether at work, rest or play. It is powerful, elegant and intuitive.
• Coastal Risk Consulting: helps communities, businesses and governments get climate ready and storm safe.
• MeterHero: Participate in a water and energy exchange. Get paid when you save.
• Changing Environments – Soofa Smart Bench: We design small-scale solar solutions for the urban environment. With our modular approach to smart urban furniture we offer charging and sensing hubs as a service. Our core value is to help cities, campuses, corporations and resorts to update their urban context for the mobile generation.
• Allryder – the smart city transit app: Discover all your urban transport options. Compare cost and duration. Find the best way to your destination. And all of that in a beautiful design.
• Textizen: Textizen’s web platform sends, receives, and analyzes text messages so you can reach the people you serve with the technology already in their pocket, 24/7.
• Mark43: the next generation law enforcement platform. Our web-based system is built using the technologies that are designed for ease of use and rapid iteration. We have seamlessly combined records management, social network analysis, geo-mapping, and information sharing into one powerful platform.
• Arcadia Power: Power your house, apartment or business with 100% pollution-free electricity in just 5 minutes.
• ePermitHub: Have your own project dashboard. Keep track of permits, plan review and inspection issues, receive notifications, collaborate with other users and much more. Multiple agencies, all in one place.
• MeWe: We’ve worked with certified food inspectors, disability access specialists, and housing inspectors nationwide to develop a powerful database of industry-standard checklists that reflect the latest local, state, and federal regulations.
• EverBlock Systems: offers a modular building system of oversized plastic blocks that facilitates the construction of all types of objects. It’s quick and easy to build nearly anything, by stacking and organizing the universal blocks in nearly any shape, pattern, or size. Anything you’ve constructed can be taken apart and re-assembled again, and the pieces can be re-used to build other objects, making EverBlock a unique green building method.
• TransitScreen: the pioneer in multimodal transportation displays, providing a web application featuring custom, live, real-time dashboards of all transportation options at a location (including subway, bus, train, bikeshare, and carshare).
• Sealed: Sealed is the first energy company that guarantees a reduction to your energy bills when you make energy efficiency upgrades.

Twitter: @CityStartups