Bend Venture Conference: Tech startups ActiveTrak, CPUsage, LogicBox, Manzama, StreamIt, and Web Blox vie for venture funding

It’s getting to be that time of year again. The time when the competitions heat up for startups looking to impress venture capitalists. Okay. Maybe that’s actually all year.

Whatever the case, it’s time for the Bend Venture Conference where startups will be vying for $175,000 in funding.

There are two versions of the pitch. One is the Presenting company.

All five companies will pitch their business ideas in a Shark Tank-style contest on October 15 in Bend, Oregon. The winning company will be awarded up to $175,000 in venture funding, following a due diligence process.

The other is the Wild Card company. Wildcard you say?

… the conference’s high energy, speed event, the Wild Card presentation. Each company selected will have 90 seconds to pitch their business idea, while PowerPoint slides behind the presenter advance automatically every 15 seconds. The audience gets involved by voting for their favorite company via cell phone and one presenter will advance to compete with the five selected finalists.

So what tech startups are in the running? Let’s take a look.

ActiveTrak

Portland-based ActiveTrak is the maker of GadgetTrak advanced theft recovery software for laptops and mobile devices. They’ve been to the show before—and have won the Wild Card round before.

ActiveTrak Inc. is a leading provider of innovative and patented theft recovery and loss prevention solutions for laptops, smartphones, and portable media devices. The company’s consumer product, GadgetTrak, delivers the most advanced theft recovery software available for consumers and businesses today. ActiveTrak not only provides the technology to recover and protect data on devices, but also recovery assistance.

For more information, visit ActiveTrak, follow ActiveTrak or GadgetTrak on Twitter, or like GadgetTrak on Facebook.

CPUsage (Wild Card)

A product of Startup Weekend Portland, CPUsage is a service that “harnesses the power of the world’s unused computing power and distributes it to companies wanting to reducing processing time, lower costs and become more green.” Kind of like that old school screensaver that dedicates your computer resources to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.

You can get more information by visiting CPUsage, following CPUsage on Twitter, or liking CPUsage on Facebook.

LogicBox (Wild Card)

Portland-based LogicBox wants to help you get the most out of that seemingly ubiquitous “cloud” thingamajig.

[LogicBox] lets us provide you with tailor-made web-based applications built to meet your specific business challenges in a fraction of the time and cost of other vendors. Focus on your business, not managing your business applications. Run and understand your business better with LogicBox ES4.

You can get more information by visiting LogicBox.

Manzama (Presenting)

Bend-based Manzama is the “leading provider of listening/social monitoring platforms for the legal profession.”

Manzama, Inc. has developed an internet-based subscription service that scours thousands of blogs, news sites and social media platforms to uncover and aggregate information that lawyers care about. The end result is that legal professionals can more efficiently identify and manage information related to clients, competitors, issues, and topics.

For more information, visit Manzama.

StreamIt (Wild Card)

Bend-based StreamIt helps people get their streaming video content online.

StreamIt provides media management services to help producers get their content online. Whether the content is streaming live or from an archived source, producers can sign up for a free or a cheap StreamIt account, which then determines if another company may advertise around or over their video content. Our Software as a Service (SaaS) gives trainers, educators and business to business content providers a simple and brandable way to upload and charge for family-friendly content online.

For more information, visit StreamIt.

Web Blox (Wild Card)

Chasing the promise of push-button publishing is Web Blox, a company that purports to be the next stage in the evolution of Web development and content management.

Content Management Systems (CMS) like Joomla, Drupal and WordPress were a wonderful evolution in web development. The problem with CMS’s is that the website owner cannot easily create their own website from scratch. They are fully dependent upon “web people” to make their dreams come to life and they have little to no control over the end product. Often times the website owner winds up paying much more than ever expected and they don’t get what they were promised.

What makes Web Blox a revolutionary Web Development System (WDS), is not only it’s ability to allow anyone to quickly and easily create a website from scratch, but also it’s ability to maintain and manage the site and content at any time. A Content Management System (CMS) is an integral part of the Web Blox WDS. The website owner can not only change any words or pictures on any web page, but they can add or delete sections and pages as well.

For more information, visit Web Blox, follow Web Blox on Twitter, or like Web Blox on Facebook.

Good luck to all of the participants

First of all, i don’t want any lip about how I got more and more blockquotey as this post went on. Second of all, I hope each and every one of these companies has a great time. And finally, of course, if someone has to win? And they do. I sincerely hope it’s one of the tech startups. And I hope they pass the due diligence with flying colors.

For more information on the competition, visit Bend Venture Conference.