The 4 Memphis Startups Selected To Develop At 48 Hour Launch

LaunchMemphis, SeedHatchery and LaunchYourCity had over 20 startups pitch on Friday evening to try and secure a spot for development over the weekend at 48 hour launch. The field was great. There were all kinds of different pitches as you can see here at nibletz.com. Here are the four that were chosen by popular vote amongst their peers to develop.

ScrewPulp

ScrewPulp (as in Pulp Fiction, literature etc). Founder Richard Billings has an innovative new spin on the publishing and selling of e-books. Traditional models are flawed because the pricing is so spread out.

Screw Pulp’s distribution works like this. The first 100 copies of an e-book are distributed free in exchange for two things. Those two things are a social media mention across Twitter or Facebook and a star rating review. In other words, threw ScrewPulp an avid reader could read as many books as they want for free, as long as they were one of the first 100 people to download it, share it on social mean and then they give it a rating and review.

Now you can’t get another free book until both the share and the rating/review are completed. Why is this important? Because it drives feedback for the book and sharing of the book. You’re not obligated to give it a good review, just a review.

Now the next batch of books are $.99 then $1.99 and so on. Hear Billings describe it in the video below.

Yaddoog (Good Day Backwards)

I had to think to myself for a while, when was the last time a good photo sharing app was pitched. It’s been quite a while. However Friday night in Memphis a brand new idea for a photo sharing app was pitched and it’s great.

Founder Harold Strong started his pitch out by asking “How was your day” and pointing out that just about everyone in the world says “Fine”, which of course is a BS answer.

Strongs app idea has you take 24 pictures on your smartphone throughout your day. Then at the end of the day at a set time, the app uploads all 24 pictures to the Yaddoog site. Why not one by one, why 24? Because 24 pictures tells a story.

Watch the pitch below… It’s good…




Happy Potty

I know one entrepreneur who had a very similar idea called soflush.it two years ago but never developed it. No problem because Douglas Starnes and Daniel Pritchett have Happy Potty down pat.

Imagine you’re on a car trip and you have to go to the bathroom. When you pull over at the local BP station the restroom is a disaster and hasn’t been cleaned in days. Now imagine if you had an app with bathroom ratings on cleanliness, ease of use, hospitality etc.

Now, imagine that the app followed your GPS location and mapped out for you bathrooms that were open on your route, and clean. You would use that, you know you would.

I can’t wait to see the product they have at the end of the weekend.  See the pitch below.

LostAPet

The idea here is great. The pitch was heartfelt, I think the name sucks but that’s because the pitch was so good.

James told a great story about finding a lost dog, spending hours researching what to do with a found dog and then distributing over 100 flyers. This process took hours.

During the presentation, James said “There’s no amber alert for pets”. That’s why I think the LostAPet name sucks so bad.. the name was right there in the pitch, something like “PetAlert””Doggie Alert”BowWowAlert” but nevertheless if 48 Hour Launch was a nationwide popular vote contest, this idea would be hard to beat. Everyone has a soft spot for pets and a nationwide bulletin board site to find and post lost dogs is something long needed.

It’s one of those ideas where you think “Why didn’t I think of that?”, because James did! Watch the video below, and maybe someone from the team will agree that the name could be better:

See more of our 48 Hour Launch coverage here