Chicago Archives - Page 7 of 10

Chicago Techweek 2012: GoSoapBox Demo & Interview (video)

We met GoSoapBox here at Techweek Chicago 2012. They began with the idea of a Social Q&A service. Dave Mulder went to the Lansing Startup Weekend and walked away the winner with Social Q&A. Dave described it as, “socially-ranked questions and answers for the classroom.” This idea grew from Dave’s personal experience in college lecture halls and when he originally pitched the idea at the Startup Weekend it squeaked into the competition with the bare minimum requirements. Dave pitched the idea and captured the attention of John Pytel and Eduardo Serrano – who joined him to build out the idea.

John (who is now co-founder and CEO) described his reaction when he heard the pitch.

When Dave told me about his idea for GoSoapBox, it was an “Aha” moment for me. Give students a platform to contribute to class without a physical interruption and they’ll use it! I know I would have. What I love about GoSoapBox though is that its value isn’t limited to students who don’t feel like participating, it benefits the entire class….even the A+ students sitting in the front row.

Later they joined the 2011 Chicago Lean Startup Challenge – and won. Dave discussed this with me at length but explained (in a nutshell) that it stressed build fast, fail fast, build again, repeat. Don’t spend ages trying to “perfect” the app or idea only to find out that you’ve just blown all of the money in the bank and the users hate it. GoSoapBox built different versions of their app and let users test it, provide feedback, and then they went back and rebuilt.

Why were they at Techweek 2012? Part of the reason certainly must have included the fact that they work just four floors above Techweek at 1871. Primarily they decided due to the summer downturn by educators and schools it makes sense to look into other options for revenue. Notice I said other options. They are bringing in money already. Techweek seemed to be the perfect time for them to launch their solution for conferences.

GoSoapBox improves audience engagement at your event by giving your audience an anonymous platform to ask questions, and the ability to respond to polls using any smartphone, tablet, or laptop…. all in real time.

No more dealing with complicated clickers, running around with microphones, or hearing from THAT GUY over and over. GoSoapBox makes audience engagement more interactive, more efficient, and more enjoyable than ever before.

When I first heard what the original concept did I immediately thought of any number of conferences that I’ve attended that included a Q&A session. Typically, if the speaker is very popular, it can be absolutely impossible to have your question asked. I thought this would be perfect for those situations. The audience can vote up questions that appeal to the whole rather than just a single person, the speaker could track the crowds interests through live polling, and it can serve to help make it so the person who asked the tough question remains anonymous (giving those of us in the press an edge if we’ve already pre-written our story while betting on the answer we might hear).

Dave and I discuss GoSoapBox, Chicago, and 1871 in the video interview below.

Linkage:

Find out more about GoSoapBox here

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Startup Interview With Chicago Startup KlutchClub

One of the startups we were very interested in meeting up with in Chicago was KlutchClub. We featured this subscription box for health and wellness startups back in April here on nibletz.com. Even in that short time we saw Klutch Club exploding with growth.

The KlutchClub booth at Startup City during TechWeek was slammed throughout the exhibition. Their card jar was full, yet they didn’t win the People’s Choice award. (we have no faith in that card system). They are definitely one of the top Chicago startups in our book. And, KlutchClub is woman owned.

Founder and CEO Julie Bashkin created KlutchClub out of her own needs. She spent some time in her career in corporate America in a position where she had to trail 4 days out of every 5 day work week. She struggled to find quality health and wellness products that worked, fit her travel lifestyle and were cost effective.

Through her career in marketing she found that vendors weren’t getting to the customers they needed to and customers weren’t finding these manufacturers products. KlutchClub solves that problem as well.

After a couple of years of vetting the idea out, she finally launched KlutchClub to a great reception. Bashkin won’t say how many subscribers she has but she happily reported that they’ve shipped over 15,000 boxes.

Each monthly box contains a minimum of $50 in products and members pay $18 per month. As you’ll see in the video though, this months box is well over $150 with just one of the products retailing at $70. This is a win win for every household.

The original KlutchClub boxes are all geared towards women however with the feedback and subscribers Bashkin has already picked up she quickly set out to design a box for men as well. That monthly subscription will begin in August, and we are definitely getting on that list.

Check out our video interview with Bashkin below:

Chicago Startup: Benevolent One Of The Greatest Ideas At TechWeek

We scoped out Benevolent.net at TechCocktails mixer on Sunday night at TechWeek 2012. We didn’t learn that much about it and they quickly went on the shortlist for Monday. I’m really glad that we did get to spend time withMegan Kashner the founder and CEO of Benevolent.net because what she and her startup are doing is incredible.

Benevolent is a kickstarter like platform for low income people to get things that they need to better their lives. Kashner, a career long Licensed Clinical Social Worker, found that in her days of seeing low income clients that just one extra push like $100 for a pair of glasses and an eye exam, or $200 for a college credit course, could make or break someone trying to rebuild their lives.

Social Workers are always told to try not to bring their work home, and not to mix their personal lives with their work lives, but I know about 5 social workers who work with low income people or people in recovery who take themselves almost to poverty levels by just giving their clients that extra money for that thing that they really need (not want).

Well Benevolent makes helping people with these kinds of needs easier, however Kashner is no fool she has a very serious vetting process for the needs based kickstarter platform. First off, the user who “needs” something needs to be endorsed by a social worker or accredited 501 C3 organization. Kashner and her team make sure that each “endorser” or “sponsor” is fully vetted and that no one is trying to fraudulently rip off people by pulling on their heart strings.

Benevolent is already making a difference. Kashner showed me an example of a young lady who was trying real hard to interview for jobs and she was very self conscious about her thick glasses. She really wanted contact lenses but couldn’t afford the lens exam and that first box of lenses. Her story was endorsed and she quickly received enough donations for the contact lenses. Now at the end of the campaign the funds don’t go to the person that actually needs the item, but rather the social worker or non profit that is the sponsor. This provides an extra layer of security and insures the donators that the money was used exactly for what it was intended.

Check out the video below:

Linkage:

Check out Benevolent here at benevolent.net

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Startup Interview: Chicago Startup PrepHero

PrepHero is a new Chicago startup that bills itself as the premiere “social” development network for athletic training. While RocBob, another startup that exhibited at Chicago TechWeek, is about recreational sports, the team and “the game”, Prep Hero is about the athlete.

PrepHero allows the coach and the athlete to keep up with their training regiment, skill sets, areas of improvement and more. The coach can then use the PrepHero platform to keep up with his or her entire team and map the progress of their athletes.

What sets PrepHero apart from other scholastic athlete focused startups is that PrepHero is about the conditioning and developing of the athlete. It’s more invested in the person who is the athlete rather than how many home runs, RBIs, rebounds or free throws they have.

Where some platforms for athletes are about bragging rights and wins, PrepHero is about achievement and progress. In fact those who support the athlete, outside of the coaches circle, are called boosters. Boosters can be dad, mom and other family members, even your grandfather states away.

We got a chance to interview Barry Tarter the co-founder and CEO of PrepHero about this unique new idea. Check out the video below:

Linkage:

Find out more about PrepHero’s here

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Chicago Startup: Safe Snips Wins TechWeek Launch Competition

Monday at Chicago TechWeek was Startup City day. 34 Startups from Chicago and everywhere else participated in an expo day and Launch competition.

The competition included $100,000 I’m cash and business services for the winning companies. The prize package included six months free space from Catapult, services from Microsoft, Motorola Xyboard tablets from Verizon Wirless, a year supply of Diet Coke, $5,000 dollars in cash and more.

The finalists in the contest were narrowed down by their startup overall. The panel of judge combed the exhibit floor early on in the day and then selected four finalists. A fifth finalist came from popular vote by attendees. Attendees of the Startup City expo were given a card when they went in and told to put their card in the jar of the startup they liked the best. We thought it was a good system but apparently flawed in talking with over 50 attendees none of them had even seen the booth for Biz Inject the startup that had supposedly won the popular vote. Even worse during the judges Q&A the founder had trouble conceptualizing his concept in pitch form….

The other four startups selected were great by our standards. They were all fresh innovative ideas, with great pitches. The other four finalists were GDine, Mouse House, SafeSnips and Pretty Quick.

GDine is revolutionizing the way people dine in groups. Using GDines platform users can enjoy similar benefits to “Restaurant Week” year round. Groups can choose menus from participating restaurants, split the check and pay in advance. GDine has already received $650,000 in funding, and released last March, The service is already available in Chicago and Ne York.

The company founded said that with only 30 restaurants on board in New York as well as the fact that they’ve only been in New York a couple months, New York is pacing to pass Chicago,

Mouse House I love it when I learn cool totally off the wall things. With Mouse House I did just that. This startup has revolutionized the way Mice ponds are tracked and kept up with in labs,

Traditionally mice are kept in groups in cages with index cards on the front of the cage and data updated by hand. Mouse House puts the information in an iPad app. This new app greatly cuts down on the time of the administration of keeping up with the mice and frees scientists up to spend more time experimenting.

Pretty Quick

this startup was founded by a former employee of also Loreal who discovered the problem she was solving when a plane she was to take from France back to the states was delayed 2 hours. As she said in her pitch, she had two hours to be by herself and do something for herself.

She wanted to get her nails done and find somewhere in the airport or close by to do that, and book an appointment on short notice.

Now here new startup makes it extremely easy to find salons and book appointments with a variety of options. Again a really great idea.

SafeSnips would fall into the medical devices category. The team behind SafeSnips has developed a technology that will be implemented onto surgical cutting instruments. Using near infra red technology SafeSnips will make cutting safer and less likely to accidentally cut arteries which can be fatal.

SafeSnips had one of the most innovative ideas. Since they are incorporating their technology into existing medical devices they don’t expect FDA approval to take very long.

On top of their innovative technology they had a great and enthusiastic pitch. During the Q&A session during the finals the pitchman for SafeSnips didn’t miss a beat while answering the questions. Obviously these factors played into SafeSnips being the winner of the TechWeek launch competition.

Linkage:

Find out more about SafeSnips here at their website

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Chicago Tech Week 2012: Check Out Social Defender

If you need to keep control of your social media presence than you need a social media dashboard. While there are a lot of them out there, Social Defender has one of the best designs that we’ve seen.

Your first account through Social Defender is free and after that you can add more accounts and features with a premium.

SocialDefender also analytical tools that give you instant feedback and monitoring of Twitter, Facebook,YouTube, Google Plus,Tumblr Blogger and More.

The interface is easy to understand and can show you instantly where you need improvement on the media front.

For more information check out the video below:

Linkage:

Find out more about SocialDefender at SocialDefender.com

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Chicago TechWeek: RecBob Recreational Sports, Socially INTERVIEW

While here at TechWeek 2012 in Chicago we got to meet the CEO and co-founder of RecBob. His name isn’t Bob, we asked. We also asked if RecBob was related to Bob the builder, and although they look like they could be related, alas they are not.

What RecBob is though, is a way to connect people for recreational sports socially. It’s a way for coaches, players and parents to stay connected around their recreational sports. Need to collect dues, RecBob can handle it. Need to find a replacement player RecBob can handle it.

Their Motto: We Can Play It, Yes We Can,

ok not really, and the fact that I have a 4 3/4 year old is really starting to show.

RecBob is way more than league management. From our vantage point it’s like LockerDome for soccer moms.

John Schnipkoweit the co-founder and CEO left his position at Ovation to develop and grow RecBob,

I remember in the 80’s when my mom had folders of papers from all my different hockey teams and canceling practice for a snow storm involved hours on the phone. Those are just some of the pain points that RecBob can fix and at the same time make rec sports more fun and social.

Check out the video interview below:

Linakge

Chicago Startup: BT Social Is The Social Network For Business Travelers INTERVIEW

At Chicago Techweek 2012 we met Tim Hines the founder of BT Social. BT Social is “The Business Traveler’s Social Meeting Place”. It’s geared towards business travelers that travel a lot. Whether they travel by plane,train or automobile, as long as they stay in hotels and “travel” this is a place for them.

Think about that George Clooney Movie Up In The Air, where Clooney plays the role of a man who travels all over the country firing people. He lives a very disconnected life, he is rarely home and then meets a woman who travels just about as much as him. They spend the night they meet each other comparing loyalty cards and loyalty status for airlines and hotels.

Although it’s just a movie there are people out there in the world that travel as much as Clooney does in the movie.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could make travel buddies. You could find out if one of your travel buddies is in the hotel lounge that you’re staying at or maybe picking up a bite down the road. You could share travel itineraries with friends a lot and get alerts when you and one of your travel buddies is in the same city/state as you.

Now you can make plans with friends you may not otherwise see. You can stop ordering a six pack and watching reruns on HBO and go out and do something, even during travel time.

Hines has some interesting plans for partnerships and also monetization. Hines plans to partner with major travel providers to offer perks to those signing up for BT Social from an airline or hotels loyalty program.

Social networks are nothing new. There seems to be a social network everywhere you turn. This idea is new though and it has potential to do great things.

Check out our video interview with Hines:

Linkage:

Check out BT Social here at their website

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DC Startup: Veteran Central Shows Off Their Stuff At TechWeek Chicago

Chicago Techweek attracted a fair amount of startups form outside the windy city. VeteranCentral was one of those startups.

Veteran Central is a massive resource for veterans who are looking to get back into the work force the site includes job boards, resources for veterans getting jobs in civilian life, and places for jobs that hire veterans to source new employees.

We spoke with Daniel Weissharr who handles jobs and resumes for the Washington DC based startup, about Veteran Central. He told us that some of the key elements to Veteran Central are the resources. For example, if a veteran needs help creating a resume they can find help on Veteran Central.

Veteran Central goes beyond just jobs and also offers resources for health, benefits, housing, and money management.

Check out our video interview below with Weissharr and see what Veteran Central is all about:

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:

Interview With Chicago Startup ReviewTrackers At Techweek 2012

As we made our way into Techweek 2012 on Saturday we started checking Twitter. In going over TechWeek tweets we discovered that not only was there a hashtag for TechWeek (#techweekchi) but there was also a hash tag for the bathrooms at TechWeek… Who does that?

The hashtag for the TechWeek bathrooms is #TWBR and it’s a promotion being put on by the TechWeek staff in conjunction with startup ReviewTrackers.

ReviewTrackers does exactly what their name says they do. They track reviews on sites like Yelp, Travelocity and others and “clip” them and then send them back to their clientele.

ReviewTrackers is targeting businesses with multiple locations. Now some businesses may believe that they can handle this on their own, well it turns out you can’t, and especially not as efficiently as ReviewTrackers can.

ReviewTrackers found that a one-star review on Yelp can cost a business about 9% in sales. That’s something you want to be watching 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. With ReviewTrackers you can, and you still have time for family, golf and working (well maybe).

We took a break from the show floor to hear more about ReviewTrackers, their service and the bathrooms with CEO Chris Campbell. Campbell got to share with us the good news that they are headed to Chile for the Startup Chile incubator and they already have a user base including some big enterprise companies.

Check out the video below:

Linkage

Check out ReviewTrackers at their website reviewtrackers.com

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Chicago TechWeek: ACT Co-Founder Mike Muhney Is Back, And This Time It’s Mobile: VIPorbit

Many people in today’s business world especially the cusp of Gen X and Gen Y take for granted the contribution that Mike Muhney made to the way we get things done. Muhney is the co-founder and co-creator of ACT.

ACT was one of the first complete CRM (Contact Relationship Management) software companies in the world. Although it was no joke, the first version of ACT debuted on April Fool’s Day 1987. Yes over 25 years ago.

At that time Muhney didn’t know that they would create an entire industry, books would be written about managing relationships and business as we know it would be changed forever. Relationship management makes your contacts have a more meaningful impact on everything including the bottom line.

Through different spots in my radio career and a short lived stint as a record rep (because the company was sold to Disney) I used ACT and would do things like make notes that a gatekeeper (receptionist) had three young sons who played T-Ball or that Mr. so and so hated golf and hated the Alabama Crimson Tide even more.

Adding this kind of information to your contacts, along with a map of which contacts know who and a record, or event log of every single contact ever made with that person, keep you not only up to date with what’s going on but gives you a competitive edge when it comes to making real contact with people and making people at ease in business dealings.

What Muhney has done, is come out of retirement to take ideas that were the foundation of CRM and apply them to a mobile setting. Muhney is a relationship zen and probably doesn’t ever mutter a bad word about anybody but as he points out there are hundreds of millions of iOS users out there and roughly 15 million using what’s available on the market from companies like Salesforce and even ACT (which is now owned by Symantec). This provides a world of opportunity for the Dallas based VIPOrbit.

What’s more fascinating to me was the time spent with Muhney and the fact that Im going to spend even more time with him because ACT taught my life business lessons that have given me a competitive edge. People have asked how I did this, or how I scored this meeting. In fact I spent an hour with a good friend at a Memphis startup giving him ideas on how to get his emails read. It’s little tricks you teach yourself using ACT that make that so much easier. We’ll get to a whole blog post about that, but 25 years later with Google, LinkedIn, Facebook and more, it’s so much easier to find and add key elements to someone’s VIPorbit record that could make that difference.

So check out the interview below and download VIPOrbit to your iPhone or iPad today. My only qualm at the moment is that device to device syncing is still about a month away, which really means I’m going to have to wait to harness all that power.

Here’s the video:

Linkage:

Check out more about VIPOrbit here at their website

Here’s their page in the iTunes App Store

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Minneapolis Startup: Wahooly Giving Away Equity At Chicago Tech Week 2012 VIDEO INTERVIEW

Wahooly has had a lot of buzz lately. Their model which has been described by many as Kickstarter meets Klout, encourages social rockstars to mobilize and support startups for an equity stake. As serial entrepreneurs, Wahooly co-founders Dana Severson, and Connor Hood know that the hardest thing for startups to do is gain traction, especially startups “everywhere else (that’s one reason we’re even here).

So what is this novel model and how does it work?

Well Wahooly takes social media influencers who sign up and presents 200 startups to the influencer per year. If in 12 months you decide to “invest” your social media influence in each of the 200 startups, then you’ll actually own an equity stake in all 200 of those startups. The best part is you’re leveraging your influence, not your dollars.

Startups who use Wahooly set up testing groups between 5k and 8k people. Up to 8% equity is set aside for this group. The group of influencers are asked to “Promote, Improve and Engage” and also give guidance and feedback in exchange for the equity. You may think that 5k to 8k people with Wahooly being a startup themselves, is a lot. Well Wahooly already has 30,000 influencers signed up in their capped beta. They also have a pretty hefty wait list brewing.

As for startups, there are 450 or so signed up to date.

We got to talk with an enthusiastic Severson at Chicago TechWeek. Naturally because of our mutual love of startups “everywhere” we hit it off and Wahooly was one of the first companies on our list to see at TechWeek. Their booth was buzzing though so it took hours to get some face time with Severson. Below is that video interview.

Linkage:

Find out more about Wahooly here

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Chicago Startup: Shortlist Easy To Use Event Organizer App TechWeek 2012 Interview VIDEO

We’ve seen recently how important mobile apps are to the event industry. In fact, event software giant Cvent went from never acquiring a company to acquiring two event app development companies within a week. That shows how important mobile apps are to the $263 billion dollar U.S. meeting industry.

A new startup, and recent graduate of Excelerate Labs, Shortlist, has come to the party with a new mobile app solution for any event organizer, big or small.

To compliment matters Shortlist packs a ton of features into a simple to use app from event creation, to end user functionality in a smart, easy to navigate UX.

On the social side, Shortlist is able to connect event attendees to each other using their proprietary “connection engine” algorithms. You’ll get to meet, new and influential people who are attending the same event.

We got to talk to CTO and co-founder Brantley Harris in this quick interview video below. Harris talks about Shortlist and also what they learned in the Excelerate Labs accelerator.

Linkage:

Check out shortlist at getshortlist.com

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