Los Angeles Archives - Page 4 of 4

L.A. Startup: Hereon.biz Discover Business Professionals Around You INTERVIEW

The past year has been a big one for discovery apps. We all know about the hype surrounding Highlight, Glancee, and countless other social discovery apps at south by southwest this year. Discovery apps are great for discovering people around you.

Most of the discovery apps are using Facebook and Foursquare as their backbone. This is great for finding people with like minded interests or in the same place but sometimes you want more out of a discovery app. Take conventions for instance. Big conventions like South By Southwest and CES have hundreds of thousands of people around. With everyone checking in somewhere or another it can be kind of noisy.

Hereon.biz solves the noise problem for people that are looking to meet people in their same profession or field. In most cases you’re paying hundreds if not thousands of dollars to participate in a work or professional conference. You don’t need to meet the barista from Starbucks that happens to be a block away jamming with friends.

Hereon.biz uses LinkedIn API’s to connect people in like minded professions. Ultimately events like conferences and conventions or being in major hubs on business are the ideal place where Hereon.biz really comes in handy, but you may be surprised at the people that are around you at home, in your same profession.

I know that when I signed up for Google+ and discovered the nearby feature it showed a lot more Google+ users in my hometown than I thought. However, after perusing their streams and profiles most of them really didn’t have much in common with me, outside the fact that they used Google+.

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We Are At CityGrid Hackathon LA All Weekend Long

This weekend, we’ll be at the CityGrid Los Angeles Hackathon which brings together people of all different backgrounds, in a move to make local discovery better via both the Web as well as the Mobile space. From Friday the 27^th of April till Sunday the 29^th individuals who’ve never meet will take part in build products for the future.

EXCLUSIVE: Los Angeles: 23 Year Old Woman Launches Smartzer, A Startup That Will Change Video Forever

smartzer, tv, kevin harrington, Karoline Gross, Nibletz

23 Year Old Karoline Gross Is The Founder Of The New Video Platform Smartzer (photo: K. Gross)

This story has wow written all over it and Nibletz, the voice of startups everywhere else has it first.

With all the innovation in video in the past few years we knew it was a matter of time before someone, some company or some startup would find a way to hot link or link map products in videos, like product placements, to actually make them clickable and then purchasable. We didn’t know it would be a 23 year old woman from Los Angeles that would do it. That’s exactly what Karoline Gross and her startup Smartzer are doing.

Imagine watching a movie or an episode of one of your favorite shows and seeing an iPad or some cool new iPad charging cradle you haven’t seen before. When the Smartzer officially launches this fall, and the video content is Smartzer enabled you will be able to click that iPad or iPad charger and see more in-depth information about the product or purchase it. This is what people like Kevin Harrington, CEO of “As Seen On TV” has been dreaming about.

When the technology launches producers will have to integrate the Smartzer system into their videos in order for it to work, but with the progress Gross has made so far, and the fact that she’s in Los Angeles meeting with studio executives all the time, it won’t be too long until we see this technology on the big three networks. You will be able to use your smartphone to watch tv and interact with tv for more than just checking in and redeeming deals, you’ll be able to click, look and buy.

You like the jacket Ryan Seacrest is wearing on Idol, click, look, buy. You like the dress your favorite star is wearing on the red carpet, click, look buy. What about that song in Glee, click, look, buy. Yes we knew it was coming and Smartzer is setting the pace.

We got a chance to catch up with the busy 23 year old entrepreneur and here’s what she had to tell Nibletz about herself and her amazing startup:

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Los Angeles Startup PayDragon Launches: Simple, No Frills Order Your Food & Pay App

A new startup has entered the mobile payment arena called PayDragon. PayDragon was founded by Hamilton Chang who also serves as the startups CEO. Chang and his team were also behind the QR code pioneer Paperlinks.

Chang soft launched the PayDragon app in Austin Texas at South By Southwest and decided to do its full launch in LA where the company is based. Chang has eliminated a lot of intense restaurant focused graphics and superfluous extras in the UI to offer an easy order, pay, get receipt transaction system on the mobile phone.

Customers who use PayDragon will order their food from the participating restaurant of their choice, pay for the food, and then get notified by push notification when the food is ready to be picked up. They can also elect to get a receipt sent back to their mobile phone. Chang elected to keep PayDragon as simple as possible and his feedback thus far has proven that point.

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LA Startup: EventUp Really Let’s You Party Like A Rockstar

You can rent this home once owned by Joe DiMaggio for your party with Eventup (photo: eventup.com)

Former Myspacer Tony Adam has put a new spin on the event app. If you’ve ever wanted to party like a rockstar than Eventup may be exactly what you’re looking for.

Adam has procured celebrity homes in major cities like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Through partnerships with the home owner, his company Eventup rents the houses out for parties and events. You could have a pool party at the Entourage mansion or propose like the bachelor. You could hold your first CD listening party at the home of Bob Dylan and countless others.

The prices are set by the home owner and range from $1,000 (a non celebrity castle with a moat) to $5,000 (Eric Clapton’s pad) to even more pricey like the East Village walkup Lady GaGa lived in before becoming a star ($12,000) and up. The possibilities are endless and more and more celebrity homes are coming available.

Imagine throwing your son’s Bar Mitzvah reception at the home of Joe Dimaggio or your daughter’s Bat Mitzvah reception at the home of Marilyn Monroe (same venue) well Eventup has that venue starting at just $1000.

As with the castle with the moat though, if you’re not looking for a celebrity pad but somewhere ultra cool for a theme party Eventup has those kinds of venues for you as well.

The renters are responsible for the rental fee, cleanup fees and insurance but other than that the place is yours for your event.

“On most real estate or house sites you can only look,” Adam told the New York Daily News, who launched eventup.com in February. “This goes beyond real estate voyeurism. For not much money in some cases, you can grab some friends and throw an event at these spaces.”

source: NY Daily News

Film & Broadway Producer Max Gottlieb Unveils “Lovvvit”A New Beverly Hills Start Up

If you’re expecting a story about an app that helps you find posh deals on Rodeo Drive, that’s not what Lovvvit is all about. Lovvvit was just recently released into the iOS app store by founder, movie producer and Broadway producer Max Gottlieb.

Lovvvit is a recommendation app that’s based on videos and improves interaction between local businesses and their best customers. Long are the days when everyone is waiting for the latest daily deals app. Recommendation and rewards apps seem to be the app du jour.

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L.A. Startup Spotlight: Thindish Eat Out, Stay Thin!

A new L.A. based startup has emerged out of a young businessman’s need to stay thin. Jason Lewis, founder of Thindish, says that while he was an advertising executive with worldwide firm TBWA/Chiat-Day he traveled so much he noticed he was putting on some weight. His wife noticed too. Lewis told startupfounder.info his wife said: “I’ll always love you… but it would be nice if you started to take care of yourself.”

So he went on a conquest to find out how he could continue his rigorous travel schedule, take clients out, and maintain his weight line. He and his wife combed through the menus of most of the places he liked to eat out and found the nutritional values of the dishes those restaurants served. From there Lewis sought out dishes that were less than 600 calories.

He stuck to those 600 calorie or less dishes and was able to drop 70 pounds. Well if it worked for him he knew it would help for others as well, and Thindish was born.

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When Hollywood And A Tech Incubator Have A Baby They Called It io/LA

Just steps away from the famed Hollywood and Highland intersection is LA’s newest Startup Incubator io/la. Mixing Hollywood and Tech like never before, io/LA tries to infuse old Hollywood with new Tech in a way we’ve never seen. In an attempt to break the stigma that the Bay is where you want to be io/LA invites those with a Hollywood aspirations and a Tech way of thinking. The newly launched Incubator is the brain child of former MySpace CTO Aber Whitcomb, Donovan Leitch and Chris Gartin.