In a world of Groupon and LivingSocial driving down the price of services and restaurants, a new startup aims to make the luxury car market more affordable.

“People don’t realize they can get a nice BMW for the price of a Toyota Camry,” said co-founder Corey Hulen, “they just need to know which locations and model years sell at the most affordable prices.”

As a demonstration, if you’re looking for a for sale within 300 miles of Menlo Park, California. Pricini shows you what a BMW X5 typically lists for across model years, and in which counties the average price has been higher or lower than the mean.

Developed at Stanford, Pricini is currently in a closed beta program. You can apply for access to the closed beta at http://pricini.com/sign-in

31Projects connects MBA students with consulting projects from companies.

“Our vision is to provide an open platform where all organizations, regardless of size or resources, can easily and effectively identify and recruit the talent they need to be globally competitive. The projects and competitions are win‐win situations for both organizations and students, and can be used by employers to create a highly effective pipeline of top student talent into their organization.” says founder and CEO Jon Reifschneider.

Market Guesstimate: According to the Graduate Management Admission Council there are around 1,900 business schools in the world and 4,750 graduate management education programs in 2010. Suppose each business school had 100 students interested in 31Projects. That’s a potential audience of about 190,000 students. Given a 80 hour project at $50 an hour, that’s about a $760M free labor market.

The site is preparing to launch in fall with an impressive line-up of top tier programs:

Alternatively, you can post projects at MBA schools directly, such as Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and Cornell’s Johnson School.

More on founder of 31Projects:

Jon Reifschneider, Founder & CEO

31Projects founder Jon Reifschneider has seen first- hand the value of employing students to address business challenges, having both conducted projects for companies as a student and led such projects as an company sponsor.  Jon founded 31Projects after finishing business school to serve the needs of businesses and students, which have been further exacerbated on both sides during the recent recession.

Prior to founding 31Projects, Jon assisted in the management of a corporate venture fund and led commercialization efforts for new service innovations in the U.S. and Europe for SES. He also worked in technology commercialization and new ventures for Siemens Technology Accelerator and W.L. Gore & Associates. Jon holds an MBA from the European Business School, a Master of Engineering Management from Duke University, and a B.S. Summa cum laude from the University of Virginia.

AshleyMadison is an online dating service—6 million users strong—serving people in existing relationships looking to have an affair.

Controversy surrounds the site, and Superbowl XLIII, the Toronto Transit Commission and the City of Phoenix, Arizona banned its advertisements.

Trish McDermott, co-founder of Match.com, accuses AshleyMadison of being a “business built on the back of broken hearts, ruined marriages and damaged families”.

Despite the setbacks, founder Noel Biderman (pictured above) continues to rationalize and promote the site with events like Mistress Day.

“Mistress Day is the day before Valentine’s Day. It’s the day when men with mistresses should make sure that they don’t forget about them,” explains Biderman.

Other promotional campaigns include sponsoring the “Tiger Woods Mistress Beauty Pageant” on the Howard Stern morning radio show.

Tiger woods mistress Jamie Jungers (pictured left) was this year’s winner, who reportedly slept with Tiger the night his father died. She received $75,000 in prize money from AshleyMadison.

Noel Biderman compares negative views of maritl affairs to past views of interracial or gay marriages, noting that social norms change over time and 30% of people on existing dating sites are in pre-existing relationships.

Other notable Canada-based dating sites include MillionaireMatch.com for pursuing relationships with wealthy partners.

About founder and CEO Noel Biderman: Biderman was previously Vice President at JumpTV, General Manager at Move, and Director of Canadian Operations at Interperformances Inc. He was educated at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School in Canada. He’s been featured on Larry King Live and CNN.

Ranked the top wealthy dating site on the web, MillionaireMatch features a “certified millionaire” dating program requiring documentation of over a million in assets or $150,000 in annual gross earnings—interestingly, a compensation segment most top MBAs fall into after graduation…

The site describes itself as: the first, most effective and largest site in the world to connect with, date, and marry successful, beautiful people. Our members include CEOs, pro athletes, doctors, lawyers, investors, entrepreneurs, beauty queens, fitness models, and Hollywood celebrities, just to name a few…

If you ever wondered if someone was dating you for money, you can now know for sure.

MillionaireMatch offers a white-label program where you can setup your own millionaire dating website using their platform and earn affiliate revenue for signups ($2) and membership purchases ($30).

Check out: YourMillionaireDate, WealthyDater, and DateRichSingles as examples of affiliates using the MillionaireMatch white label program.

While we haven’t found information on the founders of MillionaireMatch so far, their offices are located in Toronto, Canada:

5334 Yonge Street, Suite 141
Toronto, Ontario M2N 6V1, Canada

Check out full review here.

Joby Energy develops airborne wind turbines.

The machines generate electricity high in the air where winds blow powerfully and consistently compared to winds available for land-based windmills.

Other companies in the space include Magenn, which makes a balloon-based solution, Ampyx, which uses a plane-based solution, and Sky Windpower, which uses helicopters.

There are some kite-based projects as well, including: aeroix, KiteGen, and Laddermill.

Plus, China is investing in the field with projects from Hummer Dynamo and the city of Foshan.

Here’s what the balloon-based windmill looks like:

If you’re interested in the industry, check out: The Airborne Wind Energy Consortium and their September 2010 conference at Stanford.

Joby Energy was founded by JoeBen Bevirt, who holds mechanical engineering degrees from Stanford and University of California, Davis.

** Special thanks to Jim Wilson (Stanford MBA ‘11) for the links and info.

Founder

JoeBen Bevirt is an inveterate entrepreneur born with a passion for engineering that has driven the formation of four successful companies over the past 10 years.

In 2000, JoeBen co-founded Velocity11 which developed high-performance laboratory equipment. He served as President & CEO until 2002, as President until 2006, and as a board member until the sale to Agilent Technologies in 2007. Under his leadership, Velocity11 repeatedly achieved record organic growth.

JoeBen founded Joby, Inc. in 2005 to develop, market, and sell useful, unique, and delightful consumer products. Profitable almost immediately, Joby continues to deliver new products and record profits.

JoeBen turned his focus to renewable energy and in 2008, founded Joby Energy Inc. to develop groundbreaking airborne wind turbines to harness the abundant power of high-altitude wind. Airborne wind turbines generate electricity at prices that promise to transform the way we power the planet.

In 2009, leveraging the control systems and electric propulsion systems developed at Joby Energy, JoeBen founded Joby Aviation to revolutionize how we commute. Joby Aviation is developing a compact electric personal aircraft designed for efficient high speed flights. Electric propulsion enables our aircraft to takeoff and land vertically while retaining the efficieny of an airplane.

JoeBen holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Davis and a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. JoeBen holds 12 U.S. patents.

Swoopo.com lets people gamble against each other to win the right to buy TVs, electronics and luxury items at ultra-low prices.

Swoopo is bidding fee auction site.

Participants pay a non-refundable fee ($0.60) to place a small incremental bid ($0.01) on a product they want.

Each bid extends the auction time of the item by a few seconds.

When the auction time for an item expires, the person to cast the last bid wins the item for the last price listed. As you play, you can browse the history of other players, and figure out strategies to out bid them.

Similar auction sites have been created around verticals, such as oohilove.com for women’s luxury handbags.

Swoopo is led by CEO Frank Han, a Stanford MBA and Yale applied math major.

Frank Han
Chief Executive Officer

With over 15 years of experience in driving growth for innovative online businesses, Frank’s proven leadership ability provides Swoopo with the key vision necessary to improve and expand Swoop’s operations worldwide. Through his dedication to providing users with a fun, trustworthy, solid entertainment shopping experience, Frank insures that Swoopo is a great place to work and shop!

Before joining Swoopo, Frank ran the innovative online fashion mall Glimpse.com, which aggregated products from top-line manufacturers and retailers and provided fashion shoppers with a destination where they could shop across stores.  Frank eventually sold this company to TheFind, a leading shopping search company.  Prior to Glimpse, Frank ran the internet shopping business for the Home Shopping Network, where he drove forth the concept of “entertainment shopping.” Frank also ran eCommerce for Caesars Entertainment, was a co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of eToys.com, and has worked with several venture capitalists, including Redpoint Ventures, Greylock Partners and Norwest Venture Partners. Frank received an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BS in Applied Mathematics from Yale University.

When Frank isn’t working, he enjoys sharing his vast knowledge of rock music, which can be linked to his extensive LP collection (despite his claims that he hasn’t listened to an LP in over 10 years).

Dream Auction Item: Auctioning off a small painting by Pablo Picasso on behalf of a charity.

StyleTrek.com helps emerging designers find funding and marketing support from fans and admirers.

The site is for two kinds of people: First, those who want to support fashion designers—style trekkers—both by buying their products and contributing financially as they develop their designs.

Second, emerging designers from around the world passionate about design, but unable to access the financial and marketing resources to launch their careers in a highly competitive, hits-based market.

The business builds on the concept of “crowd funding”, a new trend using social media and fans to fund new ideas.

The trend seems to happen more typically in the arts, on sites like Kickstarter.com, where funding is more difficult to find, and financial returns are likely modest.

StyleTrek.com is led by CEO Cecilia Pagkalinwan, who studied communication arts and journalism at Hofstra University:

CEO – Cecilia Pagkalinawan – cecilia at styletrek.com Cecilia has a track record in launching and marketing successful e-commerce businesses. She has launched and marketed online stores for Nine West, Burberry, Frette, and La Perla. She has grown sales from 40 – 70% year over year for fashion brands.

She has experience in running and working for internet start-ups such as K2, RichFX, Abilon, and was CEO of BoutiqueY3K, an ecommerce consulting firm. After working at dot com start-ups, Cecilia joined established multi-national luxury and fashion brands in senior and executive management positions and was involved in ecommerce, merchandising, marketing and operations for Burberry, Frette, and La Perla.

Cecilia was recognized in 1999 by Silicon Alley Reporter among the ” Top 100 Internet Executives in NY.” She was named the National Association of Women Business Owner’s “New York Businesswoman of the Year” in 2000. Cecilia is among 96 executives featured in the book “Distinguished Asian- American Business People” published in 2004. She has been featured in WSJ, Asia WSJ, VOGUE, Asiaweek, BusinessWeek, Fortune Small Business, Entrepreneur, Advertising Age, E-commerce Times and was on CNN’s “Entrepreneurs Only.” She is a frequent speaker at conferences on E-commerce, Multi-channel Marketing and Entrepreneurship.

WePay.com lets you deposit, withdraw and spend money from bank accounts shared across friends.

If you’re on vacation and sharing expenses you can avoid adding up and splitting every restaurant bill, bar tab and hotel room.

Instead, everyone can deposit money into WePay.com by credit card or bank account, and get group ATM cards that draw from a shared bank account.

WePay provides itemized detail on expenses online.

In additions to vacations and parties, people are using it for club dues and splitting bills among roommates.

One tradeoff to using the service: There are some significant fees that you’d need to pay in both the deposit and withdrawal of money.

Founded by Computer Science Major and Political Science Major from Boston College.

Zapoint replaces expensive in-house HR skills monitoring software with on-demand services.

Employees and managers track and review skills of colleagues in a closed social network.

They discuss topics, make assessments and potentially make better team building and promotion decisions.

Employee profiles list out the length and depth of expertise among skill sets and even note the “decrease” in skills left unused for extended periods of time.

Founded by Hult MBA, Chris Twyman:

Chris Twyman
CEO, Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Born in the UK, Chris started his technology career in telecommunications, where he was a financial analyst for Telstra, in Australia. After that he joined Sybase where he defined and managed product development for their telecoms product range. Chris then joined Computer Associates to manage the marketing team for their database products. During this time Chris was on the divestment committee for a business unit that was sold to a Private Equity team in California.

Chris founded Zapoint after seeing an opportunity to improve efficiency in the way everyone manages HR processes. He pulled together a team of Mathematicians, HR and Recruiting executives to build the industries first objective measurement tool for evaluating people. Launched in 2008, Zapoint has attracted both large and small customers in Europe and North and South America.

Chris has a Bachelors degree in Civil Engineering and a Masters degree in International Marketing along with an MBA from the ADL School of Management.