NY Serial Entrepreneurs Danny Nathan & Chuck Masucci Are Bringing Date Night Back

Last April we reported on New York startup Iwannanom, a cookbook startup that was revolutionizing the online cookbook. Founded by Danny Nathan and Chuck Masucci Iwannanom took a different, more efficient spin on online crowdsourcing recipes.

“I Wanna Nom is a reinvention of the cookbook for the digital world. It’s a recipe bookmarking and discovery tool that allows the user to keep track of recipes they discover anywhere on the internet and easily share them, rate them, comment on them, and find new recipes and dishes by following friends and fellow foodies.” Nathan told us in an interview.

Nathan and Masucci met five years ago while working at POKE New York a well known innovation company that worked with clients like 19 Management, the firm that represent American Idol artists.

Masucci eventually left to join the team at Skedj, which we interviewed back in November. Now Nathan, and Masucci are back together again, along with Joni Goldbach to launch DateNight a new New York startup that’s designed to take the monotony out of dating, post honeymoon phase.

Goldbach met Nathan on a date where they bonded over discussing great marketing ideas. They’ve been together ever since, and admit that they will use their own startup to keep date night alive and well.

“Date Night is a million things to a million different couples. But there’s one common thread we’ve discovered across couples everywhere. Once you’re dating – once you’ve reached the point in your relationship where you start talking about us and we – you stop going out on dates. Candle-lit dinners become take-out containers and theatre tickets become DVD mailers. Date Night gives way to the ease and simplicity of routine” Nathan said of his latest venture. “We believe it’s time for an evening out that was actually planned in advance. It’s time to try something new together – something that fuels your sense of adventure and discovery. Hire a babysitter. Take a class. Party on a school night. Dress to kill, for no good reason but that you can. We believe it’s time for couples to start dating one another, again.”

Nathan, a designer by trade, has turned to advice from Ben Pieratt, one of his role models saying Pieratt “…is always one of the first people who comes to mind for me when someone asks this. I’ve been a fan of Svpply from the early days, and started following his personal blog, etc. to learn more about how he did it. His discussions about transforming himself from designer to co-founder and CEO of a successful startup have always been inspiring to me. He’s a totally down-to-earth guy who made it happen. I respect him for that immensely. ”

Right now the trio is bootstrapping out of their apartments where they are admittedly keeping the cupboards stocked with the simple startup things like Ramen. They plan on iterating quickly and adapting to the community that they’ve started to form.

Sure there are sites out there that recommend things to do, there are also plenty of dating communities but most are targeted towards couples still in that “honeymoon phase” no one has really thought of the post honeymoon phase period. All three founders hope that Date Night can take off and that couples that use the service will continue to have date night with each other for years and years.

Date Night is bringing Date Night back to couples everywhere, find out more here at datenight.is.

ProHatch Launches Online Crowdfunding Incubator

Ten months ago, after the passage of the Jumpstart Our Jobs Act (Jobs Act) we saw a huge jump in the number of crowdfunding startups. The JOBSAct permits the early stage funding of startups through everyday people who don’t fit the requirements to be considered “accredited investors”.

Once the Securities and Exchange Commission finishes preparing regulations for online crowdfunding of businesses, friends, family members and even customers will be able to help fund a business in exchange for a small equity stake with no formal experience in venture capital or angel funding.

This form of investing takes its cue from already existing successful crowdfunding sites like KickStarter, and Indiegogo. The main difference now is that people are funding companies, ideas, projects and products through a donation platform that often leads to perks and rewards when donating at a certain level.

As crowdfunding for equity approaches reality ProHatch, an already existing crowdfunding company, is now offering an online crowdfunding incubator for all entrepreneurs to learn the ins and outs of what lies ahead to those considering crowdfunding as a method of raising funds for their business. The company offers an alternative method to small businesses and philanthropy organizations wanting to fund their projects and ideas by using the power of the crowd and their innovative Phase-to-RaiseTM donations & rewards-based crowdfunding process.

All entrepreneurs can NOW register for the program by visiting www.prohatch.com. Registration runs from February 20 – March 15. Moreover, ProHatch’s 2013 Online Incubator Program will broadcast in a three part series running Monday – March 18; Wednesday – March 20; and Friday – March 22 at 11am-12pm eastern.

The ProHatch team welcomes everyone who is interested in using crowdfunding as a means of capital formation to participate in our Online Crowdfunding Incubator Program called Coffee & The Crowd,” said Liz Kulik, Co-Founder of ProHatch. “Entrepreneurs will be able to join us for three information packed hours over three days, and get a wealth of expertise and insights from business and crowdfunding leaders, as well as learn if donation, reward or equity based crowdfunding is right for their business.”

The Online Crowdfunding Incubator Program for ALL entrepreneurs includes:

• A Free Training/Educational Series called “Coffee & The Crowd” – an online webinar training program series that gives participants and opportunity to enjoy a free cup of Starbucks coffee, compliments of ProHatch, while being educated on the latest information about crowdfunding and business preparation by both ProHatch and industry experts. The training courses will take place over the course of one week, with three one-hour webinars on Monday March 18, Wednesday March 20, and Friday March 22, all at 11am ET (US). Topics will include Crowdfunding 101 & The JOBS Act, How to Enhance Your Projects, How To Prepare Your Business, and Using Social Media To Build Your Crowd.

In addition, from all those who participate in the Online Crowdfunding Incubator Program, ProHatch will select 50 entrepreneurs who have chosen ProHatch as their crowdfunding platform, to earn a scholarship for participation in an extended Incubation Program that will run concurrently with their ProHatch Crowdfunding Campaign. As part of the extended Incubation Program, ProHatch will deliver an array of Advisory Services including additional training opportunities, free access to a social media and publicity platform, and several hours of free business consultation.

For more information or to register click here.

New York Startup CheckOutTheLatest Gets Deeper YouTube Integration Through App

Checkoutthelatest,New York startup,startup,startup app

Last month we covered a new New York startup called CheckOutTheLatest. After interviewing them and spending a little time with the platform we quickly realized that they are the mother load of all video aggregation startups.

“The idea came to us a year ago while on twitter. People were always tweeting @ us hoping to get us to “Check out” their latest Youtube videos or go watch their vimeo vids.” co-founder Deni Belanich tells us in this interview about how they came up with the idea for a super video search engine.

Now, CheckOutTheLatest.com has just added a powerful web app aimed to help YouTube content creators get more subscribers & more click backs when uploading new videos.

The new feature allows users to subscribe to any YouTube channel with their Facebook accounts. The site allows users to search for any YouTube channels along with videos. When a user goes into a channel they will have the ability to subscribe to that channel using their Facebook account. In addition to searching, CheckOutTheLatest.com has made it easy for users to find channels they like by using the same channel names that are found on YouTube. For example:YouTube.com/HodgeTwins can be found at CheckOutTheLatest.com/Hodgetwins the difference being a YouTube account is not necessary to subscribe to the channel or to be alerted when new videos have been added to the YouTube channel.

The ability to subscribe to YouTube channels using Facebook unlocks the potential to reach literally 100s of millions of people who do not have a YouTube account but do have a Facebook account. YouTube content creators now have another huge pool of potential users they can “hook”, users who never had the ability to subscribe to their channels.

Another huge benefit to YouTube content creators is that users who subscribe to their channel will be notified of a channel update via Facebook notification. No longer will YouTube content creators need to depend on their subscribers allowing YouTube to send them emails to get alerts, or depend on their subscribers to sign into YouTube and view their subscriptions. Subscribing through CheckOutTheLatest.com, a subscriber will be notified via Facebook instantly when a video is uploaded to a channel. There is no need for the subscriber to come back to the site to check their subscriptions in order to receive the alert, or to allow their email inbox to be spammed with videos in order to receive alerts. This is a much better solution to converting alerts to views and it is beneficial to both the subscriber and content creator.

The quickly growing CheckOutTheLatest.com, will not be stopping at Youtube either. They plan to include Facebook subscriptions for more video sites like Vimeo and Dailymotion. The video giants are next to be converted to a much more user friendly way of subscribing and sharing video content.

Rawporter: Nitty Gritty Raw Citizen Journalism

Rawporter, New York startup, North Carolina startup, citizen journalism startup,startup,everywhereelse.co

Rawporter co-founder Kevin Davis pitches at everywhereelse.co 2013 (photo: Allie Fox for NMI)

By: Andrea LeTard, University of Memphis Entrepreneurial Journalism Student

To startup co-founders Rob Gaige and Kevin Davis, news is news, and it’s spreading fast with their website, rawporter.com.

“Rawporter.com helps people earn money for the photos and videos they normally post on Facebook and Twitter,” said Gaige. “Think about when you see breaking news or you see a celebrity, your normal instinct is to take a photo or video, and you tweet it out. With Rawporter, you can make money off these posts.”

Many media outlets, ad agencies, and brands want to use the photos and videos people post online. The problem is they can’t always find good, relevant photos and videos, and when they do, they can’t always trust them. Once they finally find one they actually want, they have to negotiate and determine what it is worth.

“With Rawporter, you can actually take a photo or video, post it to our site, and we still tweet it or put it on the Facebook page, but it’s got a watermark and it’s got a price tag,” said Gaige.

Every big idea has a story, and Rawporter came about when Gaige and Davis were at the right place at the right time. Back when both of them were working in corporate America two years ago, they were at a local bar’s happy hour talking about their future careers when a car ran into the restaurant next to them. According to Gaige, it was a huge scene, with the street closed down and people running out to take pictures and videos – something they assumed would naturally be seen on the news that night. Wrong. The story didn’t even make the local evening news.

Gaige said, “By the time the news media got there, the scene had already been cleared and there was no story, but if they would’ve had our footage they could’ve had something to lead off the newscast.”

Rawporter turns regular people into reporters. Media outlets send push notifications via the Rawporter app if they know a story is breaking across town. If they can’t get there fast enough, they can go to Rawporter and see how many people are in that area, and those people will be paid for the job.

“So instead of media outlets patrolling twitter or hoping someone got a photo, they can now go online and find what they need immediately,” said Gaige.

With several thousand users in over 50 countries, Rawporter’s base is now strong enough for them to approach media outlets and outsource their assignments.

For more information on Rawporter, visit http://rawporter.com.

Funding Round Up Everywhere Else: batterii, Bluefields, Nomi, Club W 2/18/13

batterii, Cincinnati OH $2.5 Million

batteri is a “co-creation” social network software platform. They recently raised $2.5 million dollars led by Cincinnati local private/public seed stage investor CincyTech. CincyTech contributed $500,000 to the round which included Los Angeles based investor Ken Salkin, batterii CEO Kevin Cummins and other unlisted individuals. The company reports that they have nearly a dozen clients. TechCrunch noticed that quotes from Nike, Crush Republic and ConAgra Foods were on their site. source TC

Bluefields, London England $1 Million

Bluefields is a social platform and management tool for recreational sports teams. The startup is originally from London and is an alumnus of both Seedcamp and 500 Startups. In addition to this latest one million dollar round, Bluefields just launched out of private beta.

During the private beta, TNW reports that there were over 60,000 sports teams players using the service.

Tony Hsieh’s VegasTechFund, Ballpark Ventures, Venrex, 500 startups and White Star Capital all participated in the round. Elliot Loh, Edward Wray, Christian Hernandez, Alicia Navarro, Chang Ng, Andy McLoughlin, Tim Fong, Richard Fearn, Andreas Koukorinis, Christian Lawless and Nathan Elstub all contributed as individuals. source TNW

Nomi, New York, $3 Million

Nomi is a retail “Experience Economy” startup helping to drive engagement for loyal retail customers, rather than having to race to the bottom in price wars. The company was founded by Marc Ferrentino who was formerly the Chief Technical Architect at SalesForce. Nomi takes relationship lessons borrowed from CRM and implements them in a real time environment that’s crucial to closing sales at retail cash registers.

Philadelphia’s First Round Capital led the $3 million dollar round with participation from Greycroft Partners, SV Angel, Forerunner Ventures, Ralph Mack, Dave Tisch, Andy Dunn (CEO, Bonobos), and Sam Decker (CEO, Mass Relevance and former CMO, Bazaarvoice).

Club W, Los Angeles $3.1M

Los Angeles based Club W claims that they are the “coolest wine club” . They are also the first company to offer a personalized and curated subscription model for wine. Their$3.1 million dollar round follows a $500,000 angel round closed this time last year. L.A’s Crosscut Ventures led the round.

“We look at wine and see a $34 billion annual market ripe for disruption,” says Adam Goldenberg, Venture Partner at Crosscut said in a statement. “Club W has great traction and a solid model. We realize we’re taking a contrarian position on eCommerce given the prevailing attitudes among venture capitalists but we’ll continue to bet on the early movers leading great teams in markets with huge potential.” source: bizjournals.com

Eh You Need My Guy, Rochester Startup Takes On Angie’s List INTERVIEW

Nothing says recommendation like when your good buddy says “eh you need my guy”. Whether you’re looking for a plumber, deck builder, photographer, heck even a birth coach. Whatever independent contracting service you need, a new Rochester startup called You Need My Guy has someone for you.

When we first heard about You Need My Guy we immediately drew a comparison to top ranking, publicly traded Indianapolis startup Angie’s List. You Need My Guy’s founder Joe Cassara says that YNMG is different because Angie’s List is a paid model with mostly blue collar providers. They also offer no accountability to insure the identity of users. While Angie’s List is a great resource for some, they are plagued with stories about bad experiences sprinkled all over the internet.

You Need My Guy is the hybrid in the middle. You can find accountants and carpenters on the startups site at youneedmyguy.com

YNMG integrates social networks by allowing perspective clients with links to their perspective service providers Facebook, LinkedIN and Twitter profiles. This way users can vet out their service providers, going a little deeper than traditional reviews and referrals. Review systems can be plagued with fake reviews, created by service providers to “push down” any bad reviews. Of course in the case of referrals most service providers only provide referrals from people who have had the best experiences.

One of the best assets for this New York startup is Cassara himself. He’s thoroughly entrenched in the up state New York startup ecosystem. He has a background in strategic consulting. But what’s more important is that Cassara is also the managing partner of Harvest Ventures an early stage venture-funding firm as well as a mentor at New York accelerator StartFast.

We got a chance to interview Cassara about You Need My Guy. Check out the interview below:

Despite Layoffs New York Times Announces Incubator Program

The New York Times is going through a rough time right now. They are in the middle of staffing cutbacks that are coming in the form of layoffs and voluntary buyouts. New York Times editor Jill Abramson has said there were far few layoffs than they had anticipated, primarily because of voluntary buyouts.

Although the times proper is reducing staff, they have announced a new initiative to spearhead innovation at one of America’s most widely known newspapers.

The new program called timeSpace is somewhere between in incubator and an accelerator. “You may call it an accelerator or an incubator; right now we are calling it an experiment” they wrote on their blog.

The Times is not seeking equity on the companies that apply and are accepted into the program. They hope that when a company that goes through the program, raises institutional financing, that they will be invited to participate. They are leaving that decision to the startup.

timeSpace is seeking media focused startups with a product launched. The startups will either already be based in New York City or willing to relocate to work in the space that’s in their headquarters at Times Square (620 8th Ave). Startups in the mobile, social, video, advertising technology, analytics, or e-commerce spaces are invited to apply for the four month program.

Over the four month period selected startups will be invited to work and grow alongside entrepreneurs and employees who make their livings in digital media, technology and journalism.

We are based in New York City, with six bureaus in the region, fourteen national news bureaus and twenty-four foreign news bureaus. We have more than 1.5 million print and digital subscribers and had 49.4 million unique visitors to NYTimes.com in December 2012. More importantly, we are journalists, developers, designers, product managers and more who are proud to work at the news organization that has won 108 Pulitzer Prizes and Citations. The paper said.

Applications are being accepted through 5pm EST February 19th here. There is no seed capital involved.

Acceleration and Incubation is a major theme at this huge startup conference

Interview With Mark Cuban Backed Techstars Grad Condition One VIDEO

Condition One is a New York Techstars graduate that closed a $2.35 million dollar round back in October, led by Mark Cuban.

Academy award nominated photographer and videographer [Danfung Dennis]has seen his work in Newsweek and the New York Times. He’s been hailed for shooting some of the best war footage ever seen. That’s in part because Dennis has found a new way to capture more of what we see in video.

Humans actually see a wide range of things in their peripheral vision and then adjust based on what’s interesting in their range of vision. Video isn’t that way. Video can actually see what’s shot straight on, but then, because of the way us humans see, it doesn’t feel as natural.

Dennis has created Condition One to capture and share things that typical video misses and includes a 180 field of vision. Condition One is software that takes that warped 180 degree footage shot with a fisheye lens and then translates it back into a clear flat image that we see. It’s somewhat like the Lytro that lets you shoot out of focus photos now and focuses them in later.

Even with Shark Tank, people know that Mark Cuban isn’t typically an investor at seed stages of the game. However, in addition to the Maverick’s Cuban’s other large business is HDTV which was just rebranded as AXS TV. This is where Condition One makes a lot of sense. Cuban’s AXS TV is known for it’s live concerts and events. Condition One’s technology is perfect for capturing events and putting them into a better viewing perspective.

Nibletz co-founder Nick Tippmann got to interview Condition One at Eureka Park as part of CES 2013 last month in Las Vegas.

Startups from New York and around the country are exhibiting at the largest startup conference in the US, everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

Dogfish Accelerator For Film Makers Announced At Sundance

With all this talk lately about “catfish”, it’s only appropriate that we report on Dogfish, a new accelerator launching in New York for film makers. For starters we love the idea of attaching the accelerator model to independent film.

We’ve seen the success of a cohort based accelerator in the medical device field with ZeroTo510. One of the biggest reasons that the program was so successful was that Seed Hatchery,brought the tech-startup based acceleration model to a bunch of scientists and doctors. To most folks, scientists and doctors speak an entirely different language. That makes it almost impossible for a great medical device idea to get traction and interest among traditional investors. VC’s and angels prefer to invest in things that they either understand or can learn to understand.

The same holds true about creatives. Film makers are often die hard creatives and extremely passionate about their work. Most investors would love to invest in a movie, or independent film but there is a disconnect between Hollywood and Wall Street. That’s why New York based Dogfish Pictures has launched the new accelerator.

Creative, often left brained, geniuses will get the chance to cowork with other like minded individuals and at the same time they’ll have access to mentors, investors and industry contact that they wouldn’t already have access to.

The program is founded by James Belfer and Michelle Soffen of Dogfish Pictures. Belfer is hoping to turn film makers into successful entrepreneurs.

“At the end of the day, James and I are doing this because we love independent film and want to be a part of the solution to the many problems our industry faces,” added Soffen. “While there are no quick fixes we do know that the only way to address these hurdles is as a community.”

Belfer actually worked at the Techstars program last year, which is one of the reasons they decided to do this program at Dogfish and take the best parts of the tech startup cohort based accelerator.

Applying best practices from the tech industry, Dogfish Accelerator offers a combination of funding, business training, coaching and access to a large network of resources and vendor perks.

Each Dogfish Accelerator Program participant gets US $18,000 as a team in seed funding along with free office space, production resources from Dogfish’s partners, and most importantly, access to industry mentors and investor groups who provide coaching for business strategy and team management.

The accelerator program will be funded by the Dogfish Pictures Film Fund II. To be launched later this year, this new fund will provide equity financing to independent filmmakers who have demonstrated their ability to make creative films while using sound business practices. In addition, a portion of the Fund will be made available to provide follow-on equity financing to Dogfish Accelerator teams that successfully complete the program.

Mentorship is a vital aspect of the Dogfish Accelerator program, which promotes openness and community building.

The company connects production teams with experts from all parts of the film industry, including finance, production, distribution, marketing and sales. In addition, Dogfish Accelerator is bringing in innovative thinkers from outside of the film industry, such as technology and branding experts, to stimulate new approaches.

The Dogfish accelerator program will take place in the summer of 2013 in New York City. Applications are being accepted now.

They already have a list of who’s who in New York and the independent film scene that’s committed to participating in the program.

Belfer got to present the program at the Innovator’s Brunch as part of the Sundance Film Festival today.

You can find out more about Dogfish here.

You can find out more about the Global Accelerator Network and hundreds of startups and entrepreneurs at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference.

Obama Staffer Selected To Run Lerer Ventures SoHo Tech Labs

Ashley Arenson, Lerer Ventures, Soho labs, New York startups

Ashley Arenson working the phones at the Obama headquarters (photo: claytonhauck.com)

Tech bloggers, political bloggers and journalists alike have been praising the 2012 Obama campaign team. Countless articles have reiterated the fact that the Obama tech team was more prepared, thorough and ready to win than their counterparts at the Romney campaign. To win this election technologists and politicos alike needed precise coordination and to remain on the same page at all times. Ashley Arenson was one of those Obama staffers that did just that.

According to Allthings D, Arenson served as a conduit between the technologists and the veteran politicos. “Day in and day out, the job was to identify challenges, and identify people who could help me solve them” Arenson told AllThings D. Obviously she played in important role in the grand scheme of things.

In most positions when you’ve achieved your work place objectives you’re promoted, praised or given a raise. For Obama 2012 staffers, a win (or a loss for that matter), meant they needed to find another job. Arenson was able to do that with Lerer Ventures.

Lerer Ventures is the seed stage venture capital firm based in New York City and founded by Ken Lerer who’s credits include being a co-founder of The Huffington Post. Lerer’s son Ben is a partner in the firm and is the cofounder of his own successful startup, Thrillist.

Lerer Ventures has tapped Arenson to serve as the General Manager at their in-house incubator, Soho Tech Labs. Arenson is going from her position at the campaign as “Director of Integration and Innovation” to a position that’s actually somewhat similar at Soho Labs.

In her role at Soho Labs Arenson told AllThings D that her task is to help would-be entrepreneurs get their projects ready to ship and ready to raise a seed round. She’ll also connect entrepreneurs to Lerer Ventures network of resources which include some of the biggest names in the New York tech and startup scene.

To date Soho Labs has launched Rebel Mouse, CasaHop and Emogo with plenty more in the pipeline.

everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference is the largest startup conference in the U.S. with over 2000 tickets sold and 100 startups in the startup village, more info can be found here.

CheckOutTheLatest Lets You Check Out The Latest Videos Just About Everywhere

A New York startup called CheckOutTheLatest lets you do just that. The video aggregation and search startup populates over 250 million videos from the top video sites like Youtube, Vimeo and Dailymotion to give you access to one site that can find just about any video on the planet, that you may be looking for.

“The idea came to us a year ago while on twitter. People were always tweeting @ us hoping to get us to “Check out” their latest Youtube videos or go watch their vimeo vids.” co-founder Deni Belanich tells us about how they came up with the idea for a super video search engine.

We got a chance to interview Belanich, check out the interview below.

500 Startups Launching New York Co-Working Space

500 Startups New York based partner Shai Goldman announced on Twitter earlier today that the popular seed fund and accelerator program is opening up a new co-working space in New York. TNW reports that the co-working space is open to 500 Startups portfolio companies and early stage startups.

While 500 Startups in based in Mountain View California (Silicon Valley), founder Dave McClure and partner Paul Singh are very committed to startups outside the valley. McClure is known, for among other things, his Geek On A Plane adventures which get entrepreneurs to build companies in planes flying above far off exotic places.

The 500 Startups accelerator cohorts are always a good mix of companies from across the country and around the globe. We’ve featured interviews with many of the current class here on nibletz.com.

If you’re interested in working at the 500 Startups co-working space, it will cost you $500 per month per desk. In addition to portfolio companies they are looking for startups that are either: bootstrapped, angel/seed funded or series A funded. They have space for 40 people. You can apply here at wufoo.

The space is located at 27th & Park Avenue South and here is a video of the space:

everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference will feature several 500 Startups backed companies from “everywhere else” including a kick ass panel called “Kick Ass Female Founders From Everywhere Else” led by Markerly’s Sarah Ware.

CES 2013: CEA Partners With Launch.It For Eureka Park Coverage

Launch.it a New York startup that bills itself as an event news and social information management platform announced earlier this month that they’ve partnered with the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) to power the official news channel for Eureka Park, the startup zone at the 2013 International CES.

Eureka Park is in it’s third official year and has grown 40% year over year. This year there are 140 startups exhibiting throughout the duration of the show. In addition Startup America will host a content stage with speakers, panel discussions and even pitches throughout the event.

“Every great company starts with a eureka moment, a unique idea that launches the next must-have product or service. And through our partnership with CEA, we have ensured that you can now find these companies within their dedicated home in the Eureka Park TechZone and online through their dedicated interactive news site,” said Brian Cohen, CEO and Co-Founder of Launch.it said in a post on the company’s website. “I’ve worked at and attended CES for more than thirty years and it has been one of the best places to find these fledgling start-ups and diamond in-the-rough companies waiting to be discovered and make it big.”

Launch.it will provide access to all of Eureka Park’s startups to these important tools:

· In-depth social analytics

· Wiki-like environment to make story updates in real-time

· Investors and media can follow companies to get real-time updates

· An action box to engage readers for investment and media opportunities

· Facebook comments for insight and feedback

· Rich multimedia, tags and geo-location for enhanced engagement and discoverability

· “Buy it and Trial it” buttons to drive users directly to point of purchase

· Customized tweets for precise messaging and branding

“CEA recognized early on that startups are now an integral part of the consumer electronics industry and created Eureka Park to cultivate and support the passionate entrepreneurs,” said Trace Cohen, President and Co-Founder of Launch.it. “Having attended CES for the past few years, Eureka Park, in it’s first year last year, was one of my favorite areas to walk through because of the innovative startups looking to disrupt multiple industries. Best of all, I had the opportunity to ask questions, meet the passionate founders behind the ideas and can now support them through our partnership to make sure all their news can be easily found, discovered and shared.”

Of course nibletz.com the voice of startups everywhere else, will be covering the entire show including Starutp Debut and the entire Eureka Park experience as well. We’re looking forward to in depth interviews, pitches and reporting on all of the innovative startups in Eureka Park.

Through our previous web properties, and now nibletz, we’ve covered CES for the last decade. Typically with shows like CES we turn to BusinessWire or TradeShow Wire for up to the minute news releases.

CEA partnering with Launch.it, a startup in it’s own right, will better position the Eureka Park startups to make a bigger splash among the over 3500 companies exhibiting during the week in Las Vegas. Launch.it is better positioned in terms of the newest trends in news delivery and social media over the more traditional news services. This way the startups in Eureka Park have their own clear and coherent voice that’s a bit more relevant than traditional newswire services.

New York Startup: Treydit Kiss & Trade Clothes

Most women know not to kiss and tell, but what about kissing and trading clothes? That’s what New York startup, Treydit is trying to do.

Treydit, founded by firecracker female founder Nicole Green, is an online clothes swapping platform that allows women to trade clothes using and accumulating virtual currency called “kisses”. Treydit opens up a virtual limitless closet or wardrobe for women to trade clothes between one and other.

An Australian startup called 99 Dresses, completed last years YCombinator program with a similar concept. In that case the then 20 year old Nikki Durkin knew that women had a ton of clothes in their closets that they would never wear, but if their closet was limitless they could find something that sparked their interest.

In the cases of both startups, rather than swapping for actual cash you use virtual money. Naturally some items will cost more virtual currency than others, which is how you make the money to buy more outfits.

Green on the other hand is targeting college students specifically, highlighting the fact that it’s impossible to keep a dorm room closet full of great clothes.

We got a chance to talk with Green, check out the interview below.