California Archives - Page 6 of 7

Chicago Tech Week: We Talk Raved Social Discovery & Recommendation INTERVIEW

If you weren’t sure about how hot the Chicago tech and startup scene is, then this may validate it even more. Raved, a Sunny Vale California startup, so yes from the Valley, made the trek all the way to TechWeek in Chicago to show off their social mobile discovery recommendation startup.

We talked with Director of Marketing Bill Porter, about their new mobile app, which he assures us is going to serve up only the best results from your actual friends.

What sets Raved apart from other social mobile discovery recommendation apps is the fact that it’s more of a layer than an actual social network. You’re using recommendations based on your current friends and followers without having to join and keep up with just another network.

The team of engineers at Raved are rolling the app out in the coming weeks to both Android and iPhone.

Raved is going to serve up results about restaurants, stores, and other places that your friends “Rave” about. You won’t get the clutter of the bad stuff, and it won’t be as noisy as other similar apps.

It’s no secret though that social mobile discovery recommendation apps are becoming a very crowded space. For Raved’s sake we are hoping that people will flock to the app because of it’s crisp and clean UX and because it promises to be less noisy.

Check out our video interview below:

Live Broadcast From Silicon Beach Fest Of Demo Day And More

Tomorrow at 2pm PST we’ll be broadcasting live from SBF Demo Day presented by StartEngine. As well as broadcasting from other events live throughout the whole event that starts tomorrow. Panels ranging from Meet The Accelerators to How To Hire A Developer. Into coding and actually products, don’t worry as StartEngine has you covered with a full 48 hours Hackathon going on throughout the event. Quick hint, teams from Disney are among those who’ll be showing up to show us what they can do.

We Interview Ari Rashti Of StartEngine And Angel Vision Investors

Over the past weekend, I was able to interview Ari Rashti, from StartEngine and Angel Vision Investors. We where able to talk to him about how the Los Angeles Tech Scene has come and gone, and then coming back again. Along the same lines we dug deeper into why LA hasn’t seen as many hot startups come from here, as well as the valuation disparity we have from the Bay.

California Startup: PortfolioDashboards Helps Investors Manage Startup Investments

If you’re an angel investor, venture capitalist or have any other kind of hand in investing in startups and early stage companies, than you know that tracking your investments isn’t as easy as you would like it to be. That is until now.

Orange County California based startup PortfolioDashboards offers something that angel investors and VC’s have been longing for. Their problem, was to find a better way to track investments in startup companies and they’ve done it.

PortfolioDashboards was founded by Ancestry.com alumnus Kerry Kane. Kane ran digital marketing at Ancestry.com and has had his hand in many different startup companies. Ancestry.com alumni are starting all kinds of companies. Just over a week ago we interview Jesse Gant, also an ancestry.com alumni who started Recmnd.Me

We got a chance to interview Kane about PortfolioDashboards. Check that interview out, after the break.

LA Startup: 12 Society Offering Hot Subscription Box Of Celebrity Endorsed Goodies

We’ve all seen so many varieties of the subscription box model. We’ve got birch box for health and beauty, Chicago’s Klutch Club for health and wellness products, England’s Flavor Box for monthly flavors, Houston’s Whimsey Box for craft goodies and countless others.

12 Society is offering something really cool. We don’t want to call it the dudes equivalent to a Birch Box because there are definitely geeky, gadget and fun loving women who will love the stuff they can get from being a 12 society member. The best part about 12 Society though is that you’re getting products that are endorsed by celebrities like Nick Cannon, Nas, Tim Linecum, Michael Strahan, Blake Griffin and Kevin Love.

12 Society offers top notch gadgets, gear and fun. Their website shows off a pair of headphones, remote controlled helicopter and a nice Spalding basketball as some of the things you could get delivered for your $39 subscription, monthly.

12 Society promises between four and six premium products from tech,athletics,fashion and apparel.

Co-Founder Nasir Jones (Hip Hop legend Nas) says on the company’s website:

“I’ve been blessed to lead a lifestyle that allows me to experience the pinnacle of creation and innovation, and I have always wanted a way to share this with the people that I love. That’s why I’m teaming up with some of my favorite athletes, entertainers, musicians and thought-leaders to start 12Society.

Our celebrity style board will give you an inside look into the latest trends in tech, fashion, popular culture and athletics that are impacting and improving our lives. We’ll turn you into a taste-maker and trend-setter by picking out products every month that we love and use, all while giving you a great value on gadgets, gear, apparel, accessories and more! We are award-winners, world champions, entrepreneurs, music legends, dunk masters and sack-artists – and we’re here to hook you up.”

Nas’ co-founder and CEO of 12 Society is Sameer Mehta a 2009 graduate of Carnegie Mellon. Mehta was also the co-founder of Mark Cuban backed Jungle Cents which had raised $1.5 million before selling the assets off to Cuban to found 12 Society.

Linkage:

Check out or sign up for 12 Society here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more stories from “everywhere else”

California Startup: Recmnd.Me The People Recommendation Site, Interview

Recommendation startups are hot right now. It seems that every time you turn around there is another startup or app recommending something or other. Now Jesse Gant, who has a lengthy resume in some big startups like Ancestry.com, has invented the people recommendation startup.

Now we all know that LinkedIn offers referrals and references, but those are all from your top tier contacts. I couldn’t tell you how many times a friend of mine, or even a nodding acquaintance has asked me to write a referral or reference for them on LinkedIn. A few I’ve done, others I’ve passed on. Most hiring people and recruiters know the value of a LinkedIn referral, which is about as valuable as your LinkedIn password was yesterday.

Recmnd.Me allows you to post a profile for yourself and once you’ve signed up people can decide on their own with just a click if they’re going to recommend you or not. Gant told TechCrunch that he had seven references on LinkedIn throughout his entire career, but on recmnd.me he already had 21.

The other piece for Recmnd.Me is that if you’re looking to fill a position or need, and you search, say, “software developer” Recmnd.Me is going to rank the software developers in the network for you to see and choose.

Through one of our great friends in Utah we were introduced to Gant who took the time to do an interview with us. The interview is after the break.

June Is California Month At Startup America

If you’re a startup and you’re not already taking advantage of the benefits from a free Startup America membership you’re cheating yourself.

Startup America is a nationwide cooperative partnership that helps support startups through their national organization and 22 (current) partnerships across the country. The organization, led by CEO Scott Case, who was the founding CTO of Priceline.com, holds lectures, seminars, webinars, events, summits and much more. They also give away stuff that’s useful to companies just starting up.

Startup America has three main goals; to provide valuable resources and connections to help companies grow, support regional startup ecosystems throughout the country, and to recognize startups as the drivers of our economy and their founders as American Heroes.

They’ve assembled over $1 billion dollars in commitments from partners to support the growth of startups.

Startup America holds national events, like the event they held at South By Southwest, Regional leader summits and more. They also hold big kickoff events for each regional partnership and then they also partner with other events as they did with Capital Connection/ TechBUZZ in Washington DC and as they are doing with the We Own It Summit June 28th and 29th in New York City.

They’ve been rapidly deploying regional partnerships across the country. They have 22 regions already and by the end of this month they will have 25. Three new partnerships are kicking off in California this month.

San Diego on June 9, 2012

Orange County on June 13, 2012

Los Angeles June 16, 2012

If you’re in any of those areas, click on the links above to find out more about the kick off events for those regions.

For more information on Startup America visit their extremely easy to remember website at s.co

5 Trending Angel List (Angel.co) Startups From Everywhere Else

Chances are if you read nibletz.com regularly, you are a startup, accelerator,incubator or angel from “everywhere else” just like us. So I’m sure you’ve probably noticed in your daily check to angel.co that all of the trending startups are almost always from Silicon Valley.

We’ve decided to highlight some of the trending startups from “everywhere else” that can be found on angel.co. So here’s our first list of five.

NetPlenish (Los Angeles)

NetPlenish is an innovative way to keep track of the things you regularly buy from the store, albeit razors, gatorade, coffee, socks, diapers etc. It hold all that information in a list for you in the cloud. NetPlenish then finds the best prices for everything on your list. This could be at K-Mart, WalMart, Target, Wahlgreen’s or which ever NetPlenish merchant partner has the best price.

Then, once a week you’re notified by NetPlenish either with a push notification or email, that they’ve done the research and found the best prices for the items you need. They get each item at the vendor with the best price and then voila in a few days your items are at your doorstep.

Talk about the king of convenience.

Find out more about NetPlenish here.

FormLabs, Boston

FormLabs in Boston is hoping to make 3D printers actually attainable. Right now companies like Makerbot and others have 3D printers that they can sell to you but they are often thousands of dollars.

The FormLabs 3D printer is going to be low-cost and print in 3D right out of the box.

Co-Founders Maxim Lobovsky and David Cranor are hiring right now and we’re hoping for a roll out soon because I want to start making action figures in my basement.

Find out more about Formlabs here

Mile High Organics, Boulder

We all know that Boulder has a thriving tech scene. In fact TechStars is based there and it’s like a little metropolis of all the next best ideas.

Mile High was recently featured in the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch section as the Nation’s First USDA -Certified Organic Online Grocer.

Mile High Organics is America’s First Certified Organic Online Grocer. Members order online and receive convenient, scheduled home or office delivery of local, organic, non-GMO (non-genetically modified) produce, dairy, meat, seafood, groceries; health, home and beauty products. We have over 500 SKUs and growing.

Mile High is backed by Dave McClure and 500 startups.

If you’re into organic food, now you can order from Mile High, get your every day supplies from NetPlenish and never have to leave the house again, where we know you’re incubating that next big startup.

LA Startup: Lovvvit Video Interview With Founder Max Gotlieb At TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012

Hollywood producer turned startup founder Max Gotlieb had a genius idea in his head and started developing it into what is now known as Lovvvit. We reported on Lovvvit earlier this year. It’s a video review/recommendation platform for people to pronounce their love for their favorite things.

After a few minutes with Gottlieb I quickly grabbed hold of the concept and it’s indeed genius. I thought back on the past seven years (the youtube years) and how many videos I’ve taken and shared from my favorite places. The number is quite large, but none of them ever talked about the places I actually love.

Sure there are birthday party videos, bachelor party videos, playing around videos and other funny stuff at my favorite haunts but not once did I walk in and do a video saying, “I love this place”. Imagine how cool it would be to have crowd sourced video reviews of peoples’ favorite places. It would be genuine, and engaging for both the loyal customer and the merchant.

Right now merchants are growing tired of the group-coupon (Groupon) deal space. Merchants are finding that they are losing their ass in margin to attract one time customers. Now they want better tools to target their frequent customers. Lovvvit provides a platform for just that, and it’s engaging, innovative and fun.

There’s a reward benefit on both sides of the platform as well. If you’re the customer and you do a video review of your favorite places you can earn Lovvvit dollars and upgrade to a premium status. As with any site the more reviews you do of your favorite places, the more trusted you become in the Lovvvit community.

On the side of the merchant, they are granted access to the videos in Lovvvit. They can share them across their own websites and their other social media channels. They can also add coupons and deals to the videos as well.

All of that makes Lovvvit a three fold community of reviewers, people looking to discover places and the merchants.

Check out our video interview with Gottlieb below:

Check out more of our TechCrunch Disrupt NY coverage here

London Based Startup: StoryBricks Lets You Create Your Own MMO Stories

I’m sure after reading the headline some of you are thinking making your own MMO story would kick ass, and it does. Thanks to the folks at new startup StoryBricks MMO fans can create their own characters and stories to share with friends in a simple to use, but feature packed interface.

StoryBricks is based in London and California and was founded by serial entrepreneur Rodolfo Rosini, Brian “Psychochild” Green and Buck Wilson. While Rosini is the experienced entrepreneur Green and Wilson are the MMO, gaming and RPG nuts.

As you’ll see form our interview with Rosini and Green the platform has really taken off in just days. 555 stories were created in just 72 hours, and that’s before the team could publish a tutorial on how to harness the power of the unique interface.

Let’s dive right in and find out more about this unique startup.

Tell us, what is storybricks?

Storybricks is a technology that allows users to create their own stories within games without any programming knowledge. It combines an easy-to-use visual editing system and a sophisticated and patent-pending intelligence layer to create a system that gives characters in a video game the illusion of life. We plan to put Storybricks into massively multiplayer online (MMO) games and let users have control over their play experience.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

The team is Rodolfo (a serial tech entrepreneur, 2x VC backed), Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green (an MMO developer that ran the legendary Meridian 59 MMO), Stéphane Bura (a game designer with a background in AI and tabletop RPG) and Buck Wilson (a designer that sold his previous startup and his apps got featured in Apple commercials)

Our advisor board include Don Bluth and Gary Goldman (the legendary Disney animators), Richard Bartle – the inventor or MMOs (back when they were called MUDs) and Chris Avellone (Wasteland 2, Planescape) who is the Chief Creative Officer of Obsidian

Where are you based?

The company is based in the SF Bay Area and we have an office in London

More after the break
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Santa Barbara Startup: Talentwire Connect To Mentors Who Do What You Do INTERVIEW

Do you like what you do? Are you looking for like minded people? Do you feel like you could offer someone who does what you do advice? Would you like to learn more about the profession you’re in? These are just some of the questions that will be answered when you join the new talentwire.me platform.

Talentwire is a platform that connects professionals to each other and allows mentorship, sharing and more. Users can share via simply writing about what they do, asking and answering questions and even doing how to videos. Talentwire integrates with Facebook for quick logins.

Once you’re in the Talentwire site at talentwire.me you can select your profession, or “what you do” and then drill down even more. For instance I found a category for news media after clicking through media and arts. There’s categories for every profession under the sun from healthcare to actors, computer coders to fashion, and the platform is still building.

Talentwire founder Sam Sperling has been hard at work promoting his new startup. They debuted at South By Southwest in Austin Texas this past March and then went on to TheNextWeb conference in Amsterdam. At SXSW Sperling was flanked by scouts from other social networks in the professional space like LinkedIn, BraveNewTalent and Dice.

We got a chance to speak with Sperling.

Interview after the break
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San Diego Startup: Monster Offers Releases 18 Localized Daily Deals Apps

San Diego based Monster Offers has teamed up with app development studio Iconosys to release 18 new daily deals apps to Android powered smartphones.

The 18 daily deals apps go by the name of Monster Dealies and Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Orange County, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Last June Inc magazine said the daily deals space could be worth $3 billion dollars this year in revenues. A BIA/Kelsey estimate suggests the revenue could reach $4 billion dollars by 2015. It’s also been revealed that a lot of consumers who aren’t taking advantage of daily deals sites and apps are leaving a lot of money on the table.

“The new ‘Monster Dealies’ apps bring to your Smartphone or Smart device those killer discounted Daily Deals that are specifically tailored for your local market or GPS-designated location. In view of the now huge size of the Daily Deal market, we think an app like this makes abundant sense, as it scours the landscape to highlight what you care about and what you want to see, while cutting out the noise and the deals that are clearly outside your particular target area. Why should you ever pay full price for a meal, massage, movie or show ticket again in your local area? Our Monster Dealies apps bring the best discounted deals to your Smartphone or Smart Device, so you are plugged in and ready to save money 24-7.” says Paul Gain Monster Offers CEO

More after the break
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Best State For Business In 2012: Texas Worst: California

Chief Executive Magazine has released their best and worst list for business in 2012 list in the latest issue of their magazine. The great news for “everywhere else” is that Texas topped the list.

Texas topped the list for the second year in a row. Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, and Virginia followed behind Texas. One of the contributing factors to the success of Texas and Florida is that both states have the highest migration of people to their states from 2001 to 2009. On the bottom of the list New York (49) and California (50), have lost 1.6 million and 1.5 million respectively during the same time.

650 business leaders responded to the survey, which was 100 more than the previous year. The extra 100 survey respondents didn’t help California that’s ranked last on the list for 8 years. Here are some of there respondent comments about California, that Chief Executive posted to their website:

California is the worst! They are doing everything possible to drive a business out of their state. If it were not for the climate, they would have lost half their population.
California regulations, taxes and costs will leave only tech, life sciences and entertainment as viable. If you aren’t an elitist, no room here for the middle or working classes.
California treats business owners like criminals. California has different overtime policies for its own employees vs. private sector.
California’s labor regulation is a job killer. We will be moving our business out of the state, which will lose hundreds of jobs simply due to the poor regulatory environment.
California should secede from the union—it is like doing business in a foreign country, it has its own exchange rate, and its regulation is crazy.

In some ways this survey contrasts what’s going on in the startup world. We all know that the largest area for startups is Silicon Valley however Texas has thriving startup communities in Austin, Dallas and Houston. Most of the tech startups in the Valley area aren’t producing hundreds of thousands of jobs which is a driving force behind this survey.

Take Texas for instance. While many credit June 2009 for the end of the actual recession, the country as a whole. From June 2009 to July 2011 Texas added 328,000 jobs. During the same period there were 697,000 new jobs nationally. This means that the state of Texas accounted for 47% of the national net job creation.

Indiana received a lot of praise by the magazine for breaking into the top 5. They suggest that Indiana becoming the 23rd right to work state helped fuel that rating and could help them climb even higher in the future. One respondent said about Indiana “Indiana is like a breath of fresh air,” they told Chief Executive. “I have operated on both coasts, the Southeast and Chicago, and Indiana is where I will keep my manufacturing operations.”

Indiana’s startup community is heating up. They recently launched their StartupAmerica partnership to a packed house.

Linkage:

Read the whole report at Chief Executive’s website here

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HealthTech Startup In California Attracts NFL Champion Investors

Former Denver Broncos Terrell Davis and Byron Chamberlain with Credential Protection co-founder Jeffrey Fricher (photo Andrew Foulk for the Californian)

Former Denver Broncos players Terrell Davis and Byron Chamberlain have invested in a health tech startup in Temecula California. The startup called Credential Protection LLC is taking a different stab at the doctor review space.

Credential Protection LLC is using a mix of on the ground, in the office data along with online data to build a more dependable review database for doctors. The Credential Protection system actually begins in the doctors office with surveys given to patients. Doctors can join credential protection in a variety of plans that range from $195 a month for surveys and assessments to $1495 per month for a package that includes overall social media management for the physician.

The need for services like this is what drove Chamberlain and Davis to invest in the company that was founded by Jeffrey Frichner.

As an ex-football player, people want to know where you get the best doctor because they assume we had the best in the NFL,” Davis said to North County Times.

Davis had a stress fracture in his shin, late in his football career that took to long to diagnose. Davis also said that he was looking for a doctor to help him diagnose memory loss, mood swings and headaches, conditions Davis feels may have come from his football playing days. Although he did suggest they just may be from getting older.

“I love the fact that Credential Protection not only protects the doctor, but the public,” Chamberlain said. Chamberlain had a ruptured tendon in his hand that never quite healed right

More after the break
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