This section of SportTechie, “Sports Tech Wire”, contains original press releases issued by various companies and industry organizations. The releases are reviewed by the SportTechie editorial staff to ensure relevancy to the sports technology industry. For information and access, send your name and email address to info@SportTechie.com
Tampere, Finland – TeamUp, the Fansite for Sports, Music and the Arts,announced today together with their technology partners Microsoft Azure, SendGrid, and Riverbed Technology that TeamUp has been selected as a semi-finalist by 43North, a New York based incubator. TeamUp is the only company that was selected from Finland.
TeamUp is competing for prize money ranging from 500k-1 million USD to be awarded in October 2016. If selected as a winner in October, TeamUp will relocate to Buffalo, New York. TeamUp will be launched in the U.S. market from Buffalo, working initially with New York based sports teams. 43North provides many more perks like tax breaks for 10 years, free incubator office space, and expert assistance.
“We are making this announcement together with our technology partners because we could not be where we are today without them,” says Donna Kivirauma, CEO and Co-founder of TeamUp. “When you are building a world class technology service you need world class partners. As a startup we could not afford the best, but we are receiving the best due to the generosity and support of these amazing companies. Going into the 43North competition we are confident that we have the partners we need to make sure our service can scale,” continued Donna.
All three technology partners are providing their services and software at no charge to kick-start TeamUp’s success. “Microsoft Azure provides multiple high level services that allow startups to focus on features that bring customer value instead of mundane infrastructure plumbing,” stated Juhani Vuorio, Partner Business Evangelist for Microsoft.“We select promising companies to join Microsoft’s BizSpark plus program and offer them our full range of services, including up to $10K a month worth of Azure cloud services to help them in getting their company off the ground,” he added.
TeamUp is using SendGrid for all of their email notifications to the TeamUp community. “SendGrid has helped many startups because our company wants to give back to the tech community to help those who are just starting out,” said Paul Ford, Vice-President of Community Development at SendGrid.
Service monitoring and performance evaluation is essential. Jon Hodgson, Technical Director at Riverbed Technology, was immediately taken by the passion of the TeamUp Co-founders and wanted to help. “We are interested in helping the startup community and we see our partnership with TeamUp as a way to test the waters and see what kind of programs would benefit startups most,” said Jon.
Better. Together.
For more information about TeamUp, their technology partners, and 43North please see the information below:
About TeamUp:
TeamUp is an ad-free social network for Sports, Music and the Arts that is making social media more meaningful and rewarding. Fans can be recognized and rewarded for their passion for people and groups that they love, and sponsors can engage with fans in a way that is appreciated by the fans. Visit: www.tmup.co.
About Microsoft Azure:
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure created by Microsoft for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed data centers. Read more at azure.microsoft.com.
About SendGrid
SendGrid is a proven, cloud-based customer communication platform that drives engagement and business growth. SendGrid is a leader in email deliverability and its platform successfully delivers over 27 billion emails each month for Internet and mobile-based customers like Airbnb, Pandora, HubSpot, Spotify, Uber and FourSquare as well as more traditional enterprises like Intuit and Costco. For more information, visitwww.sendgrid.com.
About Riverbed Technology:
Riverbed, at more than $1 billion in annual revenue, is the leader in Application Performance Infrastructure, delivering the most complete platform for the hybrid enterprise to ensure applications perform as expected, data is always available when needed, and performance issues can be proactively detected and resolved before impacting business performance. Riverbed enables hybrid enterprises to transform application performance into a competitive advantage by maximizing employee productivity and leveraging IT to create new forms of operational agility. Riverbed’s 27,000+ customers include 97% of the Fortune 100 and 98% of the Forbes Global 100. Learn more atwww.riverbed.com.
About 43North:
With $5 MILLION in prizes, 43North is a competition that’s in a league of its own. But it’s more than that. For winners, it’s an amazing staff and dedicated mentors. And free incubator space. And healthy tax-breaks. And some fierce ping pong. Click here for all the details on our 2016 competition.
Founded in 2014, 43North is an unprecedented program, made possible by Governor Andrew Cuomo’s historic Buffalo Billion initiative, with support from the New York Power Authority. For more information, visit: www.43north.org.
Contacts:
Donna Kivirauma
CEO and Co-Founder, TeamUp
donna@tmup.co
+358 40 033 9239
###