Even Startup Chicks Love Bacon, Grit Design Introduces SizzlePig

It seems that there’s only one thing that goes wild for bacon more than the dogs in the bacon bits commercials, and that’s geeky startup founders. Bacon and pigs for that matter, isn’t just about dudes, the women have it too. A love, an attraction, to pigs and bacon.

Andrea Livingston, the co-founder of Grit Design, showed off their new SizzlePig product at the recent everywhereelse.co 2013 event. SizzlePig gets a double bonus because not only does it mention pigs, but it’s also a startup born out of an existing business’ tool like Xtrant and ShortStack.

So what is SizzlePig?

SizzlePig is the by product of Grit Design, a small Detroit based shop that specializes in web and mobile design. Over the past four years, Livingston along with her co-founders; Mark Stewart, Eric Livingston, Carrie Thorpe, Michelle Shoan and Brendan Colley, created SizzlePig to handle photos on web and mobile projects.

“We had to resize large numbers of images, over and over again. We’ve made tools for ourselves over the years and developed our own platform which we named Bacon (BCN – Basic Content Network). We decided to use Bacon to help us with the batch image resize issue. Our little tool worked better than we had expected. We thought, hmmmm, I bet others would want to use this…so we put a UI on it and began to test it out.

sizzelpig™ was born. sizzlepig™ is cloud based software (can also live client-side) that pulls an entire folder of images, and allows you to visually resize, crop, change compression to an unlimited amount of sizes for each image, all on the same page. We call it ‘fine-tuning’ the images – which is very helpful for sites that are built to be responsive. . One of the problems we have had in the past is that we couldn’t see our final edits until the scripts had finished running. This could take time – as in hours if the files were large.

We have seen a 70%+ decrease in time spent on initial resizing of batch images and over a 90%+ decrease on time spent for batch images to be re-worked. This literally equals hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars and that’s for each time folder with large amounts of images are processed.

We love how we can manipulate how each image will appear and it is very fast. There are no file size restrictions, so even original files coming from the photographer don’t need additional prep work before being processed.

This isn’t simply an alternative to scripts or other tools, this is a whole new wave of digital creation.” Livingston told nibletz.com in an interview.

She continued; “We didn’t make sizzlepig™ for the sake of launching a product, we made a tool to help us resize an entire folder of images to an unlimited number of sizes and fast. These images needed to be able to live in many places and on multiple screens, and, we wanted complete visual control over each crop and every last pixel. We needed a higher quality and faster solution and were tired of settling.”

Sure there are batch scripts available but what you get with SizzlePig is a way to move the images through faster. We’ve been using SizzlePig inhouse here at nibletz and the greatest thing about it is you can set up a blueprint for the way that you need photos. We need a small 150×150 thumbnail and a 280×280 photo for our stories. We can upload as many photos as we want and that blueprint resizes all the photos at the same time and spits them back out.

SizzlePig is perfect for photographers, brand managers, designers and enterprise. With it’s simple to use interface and wide variety of customers it’s no wonder that Killerstartups.com called SizzlePig a “game changer”

You can try SizzlePig for yourself here

Nibletz is back on our Sneaker Strapped Startup Road Trip Part Deux, you can support us here.

Seelio Among Four Startups That Just Received Funding From Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund

Back in August we interviewed Ann Arbor startup Seelio.. The company helps college students highlight their academic, extra curricular, culture and social lives in conjunction with the job hunt.

Seelio was just announced as one of four Michigan startups that took part in the latest funding round from the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund. The fund is a collaborative effort of Michigan’s smart zones to help support startups. To date the fund has helped 83 startups with 19 million dollars in funding.

“It’s exciting to see how Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund companies use the investments to drive growth; the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund makes a measurable, positive impact on a start-up’s chance of success in the state,” said Skip Simms, manager, Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund and senior vice president of Ann Arbor SPARK. “Early funding recipients, like Compendia Bioscience, have gone on to achieve significant success, including expansion, hiring and attracting marquee clients. The four early stage companies funded this round are using the award to attract additional outside funding and get solidly on that path to success.”

The four companies recently awarded Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund investment are Fusion Coolant Systems, Local Orbit, New Eagle Products, and Seelio. Fusion Coolant Systems is innovating an advanced coolant and lubrication system for use in manufacturing that increases production rates and tool life. Local Orbit provides e-commerce and business management tools for the “new food economy”. New Eagle offers controls system solutions including tools, products, and services. Seelio is commercializing its online platform that empowers college students to showcase their work and skills to startups.

Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund companies have attracted more than $25.5 million in matching grant and equity funds. Combined, Michigan Pre-Seed Fund investments have helped to create more than 43 net new jobs in Michigan.

Shop, Share, Indulge On The Go With Michigan Startup Ozmott

A new Michigan startup called Ozmott has said they’ve just made shopping more fun. They’ve done this by combining a map of local participating merchants that are part of Ozmott’s loyalty program. Once they get into a participating merchant, Ozmott users can decide which offer they want to purchase and use “Pips” or loyalty points, to help pay for the offer. When a user redeems an offer through Ozmott they earn more points which helps them get top tier “Luxe” offers.

The team behind Ozmott had learned first hand from a local merchant how they actually went upside down on a daily deal. This seems to be a trend with mom & pop shops that eagerly joined the Groupon or Living Social model. It’s why it doesn’t work.

It looks like Ozmott merchants won’t have the same problem, especially after throwing the reward points back in the mix.

We got a chance to talk with the team behind Ozmott. Check out the interview below.

Manage Your Personal Web With Michigan Startup: backstitch INTERVIEW

Imagine if HootSuite allowed you to go out of the “social sphere” and customize all the content you wanted across the internet. In a nutshell, that’s exactly what Michigan startup backstitch does. And, they do it well.

Husband and wife co-founders Jordan and Stefanie Warzecha describe BackStitch as a clean and consistent user experience for managing your personal web. Your personal web includes your social media feeds, your favorite news and blog sites and even your favorite daily deals sites. Now with backstitch you can take all of that content and instead of having an unorganized hodge podge of browser tabs open, everything comes together in a nice aggregated dashboard.

Moreso than just organizing all of your favorite web content backstitch actually saves the user a lot of time. Typically everyone has an internet routine. Although most people start their web routine on a smartphone or tablet, once you get to your computer for the day the routine picks up. For me I open up Hootsuite, Google Reader, Nibletz.com, about five other blog sites and a ton of email screens. This is all before 8am. With BackStitch a lot of that content is in one easy to find place.

backstitch comes out of the box with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Appdotnet. They also have a variety of popular new sites baked in along with all of the popular daily deals sites. They’ve also thought about people who read blogs and sites outside of what BackStitch offers, and allows users to add any site with an RSS feed (although they should add nibletz.com to the catalog).

We got a chance to talk with Jordan. Check out our interview below:

Michigan Startup: Meritful, LinkedIn For Students?

One of the hottest spaces for startups these days actually seems to be high school students. Recently we’ve reported on a handful of startups that are geared towards this demographic.

Washington DC startup Quad2Quad is a mobile application geared towards high school students and their parents who are going on college visits. The two lady entrepreneurs who founded the startup have over 100 college visits between their two families. A startup in Cleveland OH called CollegeSkinny aims to give high school students applying for college a place to vet their college selections and keep track of them. Back on September 10th we featured Exceleratr, a New York startup that helps high school students select and keep track of extra-curricular activities outside of the school itself.

Meritful founder Azarias Reda (photo: annarbor.com)

Meritful is a new startup based in Ypsilanti Michigan, was founded by Azarias Reda, a former researcher and data analyst for Mountain View based LinkedIn. Meritful is a social network for students. High school students build a profile on the platform that highlights their achievements in high school along with their extracurricular activities.

Reda told Xconomy Detroit that students are creating a lot of content online but it’s not positive content and nowadays it’s starting to take a toll on people down the road when employers and college admissions offices Google these students. “They’re actively generating content, except not a lot of it is useful to their future selves,” Reda explains to Xconomy. “It’s starting to bite them back—employers and school admissions offices Google you. It’s important to build a positive presence on the Web.”

Reda has already planned ahead incase inappropriate predators take to Meritful. “Students have complete control over who they interact with,” he says. “The interactions are public and monitored by teachers and parents.”

Meriful has a few meritful missions. The first of course is to provide a gateway to admissions offices and perspective employers. The second is to promote positivity and achievements in high school to friends, family and peers. The third is to curb some of the content currently being produced online that some may perceive as inappropriate. Reda would like those that use Meritful to have a more positive online graph for their student users.

Linkage:

Find out more about Meritful here

Source: Xconomy

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What, you don’t have your ticket yet

Ann Arbor Startup: Seelio Is Connects College Students To Jobs In New Ways

Seelio, (connecting see and portfolio) is a new startup based in Ann Arbor Michigan connecting college students with employers and job recruiters. Sure there are plenty of employment connection platforms out there but Seelio is serving a few under-served segments.

First off, Seelio is serving the college student to work category which is filled with competition. One of the other big hindrances for college students competing for work is the fact that they’ve been in school the past four years and don’t have real work, resume items. Seelio solves this problem for students by opening up profile space on the service to post academic papers, computer aided designs, art projects, lesson plans, photos, videos, even pitch decks. Employers can now see a more rounded profile of the applicant and can consider them for positions outside of “entry-level”.

“Instead of sending a stale, black-and-white resume, Seelio lets you bring yourself to life and present yourself in a more holistic way,” said co-founder Moses Lee, assistant director for student ventures at the U-M College of Engineering’s Center for Entrepreneurship to the University of Michigan News Service. “It can help college students get discovered. This is really important, especially in this tough economy, because they don’t have a lot of job experience. But many have done amazing work as a student.”

Seelio is taking an early stage Facebook approach to building scale. They rolled out the platform’s truAPP to students at the University of Michigan, exclusively in January of this year. They quickly saw 1500 students sign up and some big employers as well. Quicken Loans, Teach For America, Compuware, Under Armour and Airtime were all early adopter companies for the platform. They have since opened up the platform to all students with a .edu email address.

One of the early student adopters that used the service, Lydia Muwanga, recently finished her master’s degree. She was able to use Seelio’s truApp to land a job as an information architect at SapientNitro. Muwanga reported that after getting her profile posted she applied for five jobs in ten minutes. Less than 24 hours later she had heard back from three companies.

“It helps us more accurately target candidates, allowing us to differentiate between, say, human-computer interface students who love research, versus those who love wireframing,” Kati Llewellyn, creative recruiter at SapientNitro said.

For college students Seelio is a platform that merges a professional social network like LinkedIn with an actual jobs site like Monster.com, it’s quickly becoming a welcomed tool in the college students job application arsenal.

Linkage:

Check out Seelio here

Source: Univesity of Michigan News Service

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

Go Shopping Together Online With Ann Arbor Startup: HangTrend INTERVIEW

Leore Avidar has built a new social network/e-commerce hybrid platform immersed with fashion. As he tells us in the interview below, he started HangTrend, an Ann Arbor startup, when he couldn’t easily find a pair of driving moccasins. He had searched all of the usual sites to buy a pair online, but to no avail. Along the way he also realized that there wasn’t an easy way to interact with friends who may be shopping at the same time either.

Now a lot of shopping and e-commerce sites allow the user to share an item they like but no shopping site allows you to share a possible purchase online in real time to get feedback on a purchase. Just think about how often this scenario plays out in a brick and mortar world. You go to the mall with your buddies or girl friends and say do you like these shoes? Will this look good on me? Is this too much to pay? All of these questions could easily be asked online on a platform which allowed easy sharing, easy re-call and social feedback.

That’s exactly the concept behind HangTrend works. As more and more people take to the web for shopping on multiple screens, HangTrend is a natural evolution of the e-commerce space. Now only that but HangTrend has access to millions of products by tens of thousands of designers and of course you can ultimately buy the latest fashions, direct.

We got a chance to talk to Avidar in the interview below:

Interview With Ann Arbor Startup MyRepairFacts

Michigan has two great hot beds of startup and entrepreneurial activity, Detroit and Ann Arbor. We’re constantly seeing startups from both cities make news. We’ve profiled and interviewed quite a few startups from Michigan.

Ann Arbor startup MyRepairFacts is a new web 2.0 portal to connect used car buyers and enthusiasts to sellers and information. MyRepairFacts offers their users National Motor Vehicle Title Information Reports (NMVITS) for $10 less than most competitors at $24.99. Not only that though, they serve as a repository for information pertaining to anyone’s car.

Users of MyRepairFacts can start using the service when they purchase their new car. Then, every time they go to the repair shop for an oil change, a repair, a tire rotation, new tires, or any other history with their vehicle, they can scan in the receipt and other information to make a nice, neat file on their vehicle in the cloud.

Storing important vehicle information through MyRepairFacts keeps all your information in a centralized location for you in one area. It also frees up valuable space in your glove box. Now though, when you go to sell your car you can be equipped with the NMVITS report, CarFax and every receipt from everything you’ve done to the car. In effect, this will improve your bottom line when selling your vehicle.

After the user has put all their information in the system and they’re ready to sell their car they can share as much or as little of the online history with the buyer via email, Craigslist or any other site with a link from MyRepairFacts that’s good for 30 days.

We got a chance to interview MyRepairFacts CEO Andrew Ramirez about this new automotive related startup. Check out the interview below:

GM Ventures Invests In Rhode Island Startup NanoSteel

NanoSteel, a Rhode Island startup, with 34 employees is working on the future of steel. According to this report NanoSteel has created a new class of steel that will allow automakers to reduce the weight of vehicles without compromising the structural integrity needed for safety.

“We are investing in NanoSteel because of the opportunity associated with their new steel alloy technology,” said Jon Lauckner, GM’s chief technology officer, vice president of Global R&D and president of GM Ventures LLC told the Detroit News. “Over the next several years, light-weighting of vehicles will be a major focus area to improve fuel economy. NanoSteel’s nano-structured alloys offer unique material characteristics that are not available today, making them a potential game-changer.”

While it’s no secret that innovation is needed in the auto industry, automakers in the United States are tasked with the fact that U.S. Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards will almost double to 54.5mpg in 2025. While that’s still twelve years away GM is aggressively trying to start development on this project. Finding a lighter steel product, thereby reducing the weight of vehicles is definitely a viable option.

GM Ventures is General Motors $100 million dollar venture capital arm. In 2010 they invested $3.2 million into an Ann Arbor startup called Satik3 Inc. They are a battery company working on developing advanced solid state rechargeable technology for cars and electronics.

They also invested in Bright Automotive, a Rochester Hills company which is developing a plug in hybrid commercial vehicle set to launch by 2014.

GM Ventures has also invested $7.5 million in Sunlogics. That company is also based in Rochester Hills and is producing solar powered charging stations. GM plans to deploy these charging stations at GM dealers and at their other facilities.

The terms in the NanoSteel investment were not disclosed. They are joining NanoSteel’s current investors; EnerTech Capital, Fairhaven Capital Partners, and others for this Series C round.

Linkage:

Check out NanoSteel here

Source: Detroit News

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

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3 Ann Arbor Michigan Startups Get $600K Investment

Ann Arbor’s Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund is on a roll this year as they’ve already invested $2.6 million dollars into Michigan’s growing startup ecosystem. The fund is administered by AnnArborSPARk and according to semichiganstartup.com another six to ten startups may still see investment funds from the group that invests in pre-seed stages of high growth potential startups.

The fund has just announced that they’ve invested $600k in three area startups; FlockTag, Larky’s and FreeStride Therapeutics.

FlockTag is a mobile application in the loyalty and reward space targeting quick-service restaurants and connecting their loyal customers with deals and rewards.

FreeStride Therapeutics is a bio-medical startup working on therapies for bone related conditions.

Larky’s is also in the hot loyalty space. Their app helps consumers manage discounts, rewards and other loyalty perks. It helps increase customer loyalty and drive merchant profit.

So far the Michigan Pre-Seed Fund has invested $16.5 million dollars in 75 area Startups and helped to create 120 jobs in Michigan.

Linkage:

Source: semichiganstartup.com

Nibletz is the voice of Startups “everywhere else”

We are on a sneaker-strapped nationwide startup road trip through September 2013 (that’s next year)

Contest: There’s A New Kid In Town, The TechSlinger And You Can Win One This Summer

At Chicago TechWeek we got to meet the team from Michigan startup TechSlinger. This is a new wearable accessory designed to easily transport your tablet, your phone, your wallet and other small items. You can even hang your keys from it.

At first glance you may not think it’s for you, but it so is. Especially if you carry multiple gadgets with you and one of them is an iPad or Android tablet. You see, when you go out to a meeting or a networking event, or any event for that matter and you bring your tablet you’re putting a device that costs hundreds of dollars at unnecessary risk.

I’ve witnessed first hand people who’ve had their iPads turned conveniently into coasters. I’ve seen people leave them behind and drop them, shattering the screen, trying to hold a beer or other drink. Oh and of course the countless times I’ve seen beer, soda and other liquids poured onto the iPad.

Granted, you want to take your iPad or tablet with you because you undoubtedly have work to do, or you want to show off the latest app you’ve downloaded or pictures and videos of the kids. Well that’s great except most purses can’t fit iPads, no one wants to bring the bulk of a backpack or briefcase out with them, and holding them is risky.

The TechSlinger looks like an under jacket holster and has one pouch designed to hold an iPad or tablet and then the other side has two compartments. One is a secure compartment for your phone the other is a secure compartment for your wallet, credit cards, money, license, etc. I actually hold a 16,000mah portable battery in my extra pocket insuring that not only are my devices with me but backup power is as well.

The TechSlinger fits under any jacket, blazer or suit coat and keeps your gadgets from interfering with important things, like walking.

At the recent TechCrunch meetup in Atlanta over 40 people asked about the TechSlinger. At the airport, TSA folks were asking about the TechSlinger, and of course on three different trips to three different Apple stores, people asked about the TechSlinger.

Well low and behold we’ve got Techslingers to give away.

Here’s how it works. Starting this week at ComiCon 2012 in San Diego, just tweet

“@nibletztweets & @techslinger I need a #techslinger” and if you’re lucky you’ll be randomly selected to win one. We’ll randomly draw winners in San Diego, Washington DC, Memphis, Cincinnati and other places along our sneaker-strapped nationwide startup road trip, and you’ll win. It’s that easy. Then your friends will ask, “where’d you get that”.

Linkage:

Find out more about the TechSlinger here

Here’s more coverage from Chicago’s TechWeek

Oh and we’re on this cool sneaker strapped, nationwide startup roadtrip

Chicago Techweek: Michigan Startup TechSlinger Harnesses Technology VIDEO INTERVIEW

One of the first great startups we ran into at TechWeek 2012 in Chicago was actually not from Chicago at all but rather, just outside of Grand Rapids Michigan. TechSlinger General Manager Tresha Davis told us they were excited about launching and excited to support the thriving tech community in Chicago.

TechSlinger is actually a hardgoods/accessory startup. They manufacture the TechSlinger which is a way to hold your gadgets, underneath your coat that’s both comfortable and functional.

The TechSlinger consists of two under arm pouches that are kind of reminded me of gun holsters. One of the pouches holds your tablet. The other one can hold your phone, accessories, even your wallet, credit cards and other important items.

The TechSlinger is a great accessory for traveling business people. It’s also a great accessory for those who need access to their gadgets throughout the day where a backpack may appear a bit out of place or even unprofessional. You can wear a nice Brooks Brothers suit on top of the TechSlinger and No one would notice the difference.

In the video below we talk with TechSlinger CEO and creator Nathan in the video below. The idea came up when he realized he was traveling so much and needed to find something better than a traditional backpack or messenger bag that still permitted great functionality.

TechSlinger comes in a variety of colors and sizes as well. It supports all major e-readers including the Kindle and the Nook and even most Android tablets. They are anxious to get their hands on a new Microsoft Surface tablet to design a TechSlinger or it as well. The best part is that TechSlinger is made in the USA.

They are also working on TechSlingers to support up to the 13″ Macbook pro. The 11″ Macbook Air fits snuggly in the iPad TechSlinger without any casing. Even my “New” iPad with a Griffin Survivor case on it fits in the TechSlinger. I can’t wait until they are ready to ship review units I have to try one of these things out.

It’s very lightweight and would totally hide your electronics from plain site under a jacket or sport coat.

Detroit Accelerator: TechTown Hosting Startup Soup August 3rd

The creativity in pitch events gets better and better. We’ve all heard of the Startup Bus to Austin’s South by Southwest Festival. Several cities have had Startup Trains, where people work on startups on a day long train ride, we’ve even heard of a Startup Beach House (that was unfortunately cancelled).

Now, Wayne University’s TechTown Accelerator is hosting Startup Soup.

The event is open to the public and will be held on August 3rd. Startups that want to pitch must register at the link below before July 31, 2012.

The pitches will be five minutes and there doesn’t seem to be a theme for the pitch contest. There is a nice $1500 cash prize along with 5 free TechTown seminar passes for the winner. The winner will be chosen by a panel of local tech community judges.

The finalists will all receive complimentary tickets to 2 future TechTown events. The events at TechTown are all meant for startup enrichment and offer valuable business resources and continuing education.

After the pitches and the winners are selected there will be an evening of networking, and you guessed it… soup.

The event starts at 5:30pm August 3rd at TechTown 2051 Rosa Parks Boulevard in Detroit.

Linkage:

To register to pitch click this link

Source: CBS Detroit

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

Come on, help a brother out with a pack of Ramen Noodles, more here. Watch the video below too:

Michigan Startup: What’s Shakin Tells You What’s Shakin By Location

While we try to manage our hashtags on Twitter every now and then we find that we deviate to make sure the umpteen hundred hashtags for events, startups and the like are all hit to gather the same news. When we’re at an event, conference or convention, those hash tags get worse.

Take the International Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas every January for instance. At this years CES there were people using #CES #CES2012 #CES12 #EurekaPark #CESLasVegas #CESLV and several other variants. What’s Shakin handles that problem.

What’s Shakin is able to manage the social media throughput at an event, or venue by location. Now it’s not about the tag but rather the location the tag was created in, providing people are using geolocation in conjunction with the tags.

Now if you wanted to keep up with the social activity at the One Direction concert you don’t have to track 20 different hash tags, just one location with What’s Shakin.

We got to talk to Chris Hashley (I know great last name for this right?), about What’s Shakin in the interview below the break.