Meet Foodzie, The Etsy-Like Site for Artisanal Foods.

With all the brouhaha here this week about TechCrunch50 spouting startups in San Francisco, and the just-concluded DemoFall, held in San Diego, it’s easy to think that all the cool entrepreneurial stuff is only happening in California.

That’s why I was so happy to hear about Foodzie, one of the intriguing new site concepts emerging from TechStars, an incubator program in Boulder, Colorado. TechStars was founded by a collective of Colorado-based entrepreneurs as a way of promoting entrepreneurial activity in their home state.

Guru favorite Springwise reports:
Consumers interested in handmade goods already have online marketplace Etsy to help them find new treasures, and now Foodzie aims to bring similar capabilities to the foodies of the world.

Based in Boulder, Colo., Foodzie is an online marketplace dedicated to helping consumers discover and buy food from small artisan producers and growers. The site acts as an aggregator that focuses on gourmet and organic health foods, allowing small producers to set up storefronts to display and sell their products. Though Foodzie hasn’t yet officially launched its full marketplace, three producers are up and running in a “sneak preview” version of the site: Seth Ellis Chocolatier, Boulder Popcorn and Tetulia Teas, all out of Colorado.

Nicely designed producer pages feature not just a selection of products for sale online, but also information on ingredients and allergens, tags, photos and background details on the people behind the store.

Foodzie operates on a commission-based model whereby producers pay the company a fee of 20 percent for each transaction conducted through the site, allowing the producers to keep a full 80 percent of what they charge. (Traditional retailers, by contrast, often charge fees as high as 50 percent.)

Foodzie is currently seeking USD 350,000 in seed funding. C’mon readers, step up to the plate (pun intended) and give these folks some moolah.

The TechCrunch50

Even though Silicon Valley pretends to be utterly immune to LaLa celebrities, there was no shortage of fans for Ashton Kutcher’s appearance yesterday at Day 1 of TechCrunch50 at the San Francisco Design Center. The actor and creative director, late of ooma and now of BlahGirls, was on stage to launch his oh-so-grrly interactive video site.

Whittled down from 1000, the event features 52 startups plus all the tech luminaries who skipped the trip to San Diego and DemoFall.

Watch TechCrunch50.

What Will Your Startup Be Worth in 3 Years? Ask YouNoodle’s Startup Predictor.

Better than the Magic 8 Ball? YouNoodle Launches The New Startup Predictor.

What will your startup be worth in 3 years? YouNoodle’s sophisticated model analyzes information on startups before they get funding to help predict their outcomes.

The scoop on YouNoodle:
YouNoodle develops innovative ways to bring together the information, people and technology that help startups succeed.

We provide a platform for so far 50 of the world’s top university entrepreneurship clubs and competitions, serving tens of thousands of members and thousands of startups. Our tools help to effectively manage business competitions, events, mailing lists and community development. If you run a group and would like to join the platform apply and we’ll get in touch.

Startup Predictor is the first in a series of decision-making tools YouNoodle plans to introduce for the startup industry. Our development team studied thousands of current and past startups, using both publicly available and proprietary data, to determine patterns of predictive factors for early-stage companies’ success. You can try the test for free. (Not surprisingly) YouNoodle is based in San Francisco, California.

Guru’s Take on YouNoodle. Throughout my seemingly endless years in dotcom land, I have learned a valuable lesson: When you hear that press-pro Susan MacTavish Best is involved in a new project, listen up. Susan always seems to be at the heart of the coolest, most intriguing ventures. YouNoodle is yet another one of them. Contact her: Susan@bestpr.net

Note: Susan’s mom lives down here in the wildfire country of Carmel. So we know where she got her smarts.