LiveSift Gets New Name, New Funding

Local startup LiveSift announced this week that it was changing its name to MeetingSift "to better align the company's name with its corporate mission and strategy," as well as that it had raised over $800,000 in seed financing to help the company grow its enterprise offerings.

MeetingSift is led by Alex Bergo and his wife Viil Lid, serving as CEO and CTO respectively, who started building their technology company after they both earned their PhDs in communication and information sciences at the University of Hawaii.

They joined the second cohort at Blue Startups in 2013 to build "interactive tools, such as real time polling and analysis, that harness the collective intelligence of co-located or distributed groups of people such as conference goers and virtual organizations." By April 2014, they had honed their vision and released the beta version of their software. The company was subsequently picked to be part of the first cohort at XLR8UH as well.

"The MeetingSift team is obsessed with making meetings more efficient and productive," explains the company website. "We believe that with the right tools, every organization can shorten meeting time, increase participation, and efficiently implement better decisions based on those meetings."

The system can be integrated into a meeting or conference agenda and allow organizers to quickly poll participants, sort audience questions, get instant feedback on ideas.

If you've attended a local meetup, workshop or conference lately, you've probably seen MeetingSift in action. It had an early field test assisting locals with environmental conservation, and is now used at several "Startup Paradise" events, as well as by ThinkTech Hawaii. The company says its tools have also been used by local companies as well, including American Savings Bank and Central Pacific Bank, Kaiser Permanente, and ProService Hawaii.

And the business world is where MeetingSift sees its future growth. While the company will continue to offer an "event edition" for conferences and conventions, it is now promoting its "Enterprise Meeting Productivity Platform." There's an enhanced "pro edition" a new "business edition," and notable features include customizable screens and logins, highly visual reports, and online survey capabilities.

"It assists meeting leaders and organizations in planning for, engaging participants in, and reporting outcomes of business meetings," the company explains. "The result is shorter, more productive meetings, higher participant engagement, better decision making and more consistent follow up."

For more information on MeetingSift, visit the company website (which includes a blog full of meeting tips), follow @MeetingSift on Twitter, or visit the new Facebook page.