ZINNAGLISM

Aside from the plethora of startups targeting web-savvy end-consumers, there’s also little known companies that are equally relevant in their particular niche. And whenever there are entrepreneurs building ideas they often (or ideally) do this out of a desire to scratch a personal itch, as is the case of 123sonography, which provides a comprehensive e-learning experience for physicians and specifically cardiologists.

Launched a couple of days ago, 123sonography’s CEO Dr. Franz Wiesbauer, a cardiologist at the Medical University of Vienna himself, says that they have already “developed, produced and recorded hundreds of videos, enabling any kind of doctor to acquire the knowledge of echocardiography”.

Currently the startup has a prominent blog, which offers a wide variety of echocardiographic e-learning videos for free. However, eventually they are going to charge for content.

The math is simple: A regular offline course in echocardiography costs around €2,000 and there’s an average waiting time of 3 months in Austria and many other European countries. The service’s online courses are cheaper and there’s obviously no waiting time.

A service such as this is a relatively new development in terms of e-health. A very targeted group of people that are willing to pay for high-definition video-based online classes.

The company is currently in talks with health-orientated VCs and plans to expand its service throughout Europe and the US.

NOTE: This post has previously been published on TechCrunch Europe

Garmz, a fashion startup that just launched in public beta after months of preparation, aims to change how fashion is being produced and distributed from the ground up.

Besides having a nicely designed User interface, the startup wants to disrupt current models of the fashion industry. Young aspiring fashion designers mostly lack adequate outlets for their work and creativity. As in every other real-life commerce business, one ought to have pre-sales distribution contracts and a certain, and mostly not a viable, number of purchasers (be it customers or shops).

Initial financing for fashion designs is almost an unbearable task for them. They either outsource their production to Asian or Eastern European countries, whereas they have to purchase +100 items per order for having those producers actually take their orders.

This is where garmz steps in.

Fashion designers can submit their designs based upon some sort of “Designer Manual“. Their work will then be displayed publicly on garmz.com and via crowdsourcing (voting) it’s decided which pieces are then actually produced.

Garmz then not only have the pieces produced, but fashion designers can also set their own selling price, margins and cuts per sale – a very open and transparent model. Producing the items is done in Eastern Europe, where their founders claim to “have customary standards, comparable to well-known brands’ quality”.

At the current stage many of those elements have yet to be implemented, yet the founders are pursuing an iterative process of rolling out features one after one, perhaps a wise approach when looking at the complexity of what they are trying to achieve. Similar companies such as USTrendy tend to act as their own label, instead of a simply being the marketing, distribution and production company in the background – the provider basically.

The startup simultaneously closed their first round of Angel funding in the low six figures range, Co-founder Andreas Klinger told me.

NOTE: This post has initially been published on TechCrunch Europe.