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Weekly UpdatesOf the 10 startups selected to exhibit at Twiistup, a Santa Monica company won the conferences' best of the show award.
ExpenseBay.com, which that helps businesses streamline their expense reports, was selected by Twiistup judges as the most promising company to exhibit during the two-day conference. ExpenseBay beat nine other startups from Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, Santa Cruz and New York.
ExpenseBay allows users to fill out and track all their company-related expenses on ExpenseBay's Web site. Every morning, the site automatically formats and delivers an expense report into the user's e-mail inbox.
The company also tries to automate as much of the expense report process as possible. For example, users can link their ExpenseBay account with their bank account so that when they swipe a personal credit card for a corporate lunch, the charge will automatically post to ExpenseBay.
Eric Sikola, ExpenseBay's chief executive, also demonstrated an application for the iPhone that allows ExpenseBay users to snap a photo of a receipt for a business-related expense. The photo is automatically transmitted to the user's ExpenseBay account for easy printing.
Sikola said the company's main objective was to make filling out expense reports a faster, easier process.
"Doing an expense report might normally take 45 minutes," he said. "We can get that down to five."
The company offers its services for free, if the user doesn't mind their expense reports arriving in a limited number of generic templates. If a user's employer requires that expense reports be filled out in a specific format--and presumably many companies do then the user has to pay $10 a month. (Sikola said ExpenseBay offers group rates for companies that enroll employees.)
And what did the company win? Besides access to investors. Sikola also took home a small yellow trophy made entirely of Legos.
Staff reporter Charles Proctor can be reached at cproctor@labusinessjournal.com or (323) 549-5225, ext. 230.
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