Cambridge-based Vlingo recently tapped UMass Boston students Octavio Pinto as a Software Development Intern and Hsiang-Ting Huang as a Marketing Intern. Vlingo tells your phone what to do. It combines voice-to-text and voice recognition technology with an intent engine to complete desired actions.
Vlingo is backed by Charles River Ventures, Sigma Partners, Yahoo! and AT&T. The company recently announced “Vlingo InCar,” a new beta feature that allows consumers to receive and send text messages without taking their hands off the wheel or their eyes off the road.
Vlingo is taking advantage of work being done by the VDC’s entrepreneur in residence, and director of the Entrepreneurship Center, Dan Phillips, a business mentor with strong ties to the local tech community, and Edel Freitas who helps Phillips reach entrepreneurial students. Phillips has helped run four VC-backed software companies in the Boston area over the past two decades, including Concord Communications Inc., which reached a $800 million market cap, and most recently SilverBack Technologies, which he sold to Dell Inc.
Vlingo joins 25 other venture-backed startups in the Boston area which hire UMass Boston software and marketing interns.
The benefit to startups, according to Maria Cirino, managing director of .406 Ventures: “You have an incredibly seasoned, successful entrepreneur doing all the legwork, matching our companies’ needs with the students."
"Every startup I’ve been involved in has been really hard, and you need people who can handle it," Phillips says. "And those are the type of people who attend UMass Boston."
The Venture Development Center is Boston’s leading startup incubator for technology and life science companies.