Ohio Startup: Buyvite Adds “Pay Me Back” Social Payment Product

We’ve been following Brandy Alexander-Wimberly and her Toledo Ohio startup, Buyvite, since last May. Buyvite is a payment tool that makes group buying easy. For example, say you’re having a high school reunion and as a side activity you decide to catch a football game or a few rounds of golf as a group. Buyvite allows all of the group to pay for the excursion without having one person delegated in charge of the money, and risking one, or two people not paying.

Buyvite announced a new product on Monday called “Pay Me Back”. This product works after the transaction is made and is just in time for the holiday gift giving season.

With “Pay Me Back” say you and your family members decided to buy one of your other family members an expensive gift, like an iPad. Once one person makes the initial purchase, Pay Me back can divide the price paid among the others in your family and act as the conduit for the person who “fronted” the money to get paid back easily.

“Pay Me Back” has a variety of great uses. Alexander-Wimberly explains:

“This product was developed to give our partners an easy way to leverage the power of social commerce. Our social payment badges are designed to embed on product pages to promote the application. After the customer makes their purchase, they now have a seamless and social way of showing their friends what they bought, telling them how much they owe and an easy way to get paid back. It’s a perfect fit for any company focused on selling gifts, vacation rentals, event tickets and even works well for fantasy sports leagues and donations.”

Early adopters of “Pay Me Back” include Tiesta Tea, Pledge Music, Tony Packo’s, Swank Martini and payment processing provider E2E Payments of Lombard, IL. E2E President Brad Bialas explains the advantage of offering “Pay Me Back” to his customer base. “Our ecommerce clients are looking for new ways to reach their social audience. Consumers are already locked in to the concept of group purchases and peer-to-peer payments. Buyvite’s “Pay Me Back” product gives our clients a fresh and social way to promote a “crowd funding” model via their websites and ecommerce carts and it’s a proven way to help elevate traditionally group focused purchases like gifts, team costs or event tickets.”

Linkage:

Check out Buyvite here

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Ohio Startup Huddlewoo Wants To Know What You’re Extraordinary At? Launches Today

A new startup based in Columbus Ohio and Phoenix Arizona, called Huddlewoo, is launching today. This video platform gives ordinary people like me and you access to people we admire. Huddlewoo also lets ordinary people show off the things that they are extraordinary at.

Through Huddlewoo’s unique platform you can schedule 1:1 video conversations with people that you may not get the opportunity to meet in person.

Huddlewoo users create a profile and highlight what they are extraordinary at. The user than sets up an availability calendar through a tool within the web app. Once those two things are in place the user can set a price for their time, they can then decide if they want to make a little extra income or donate the fees from the video sessions to charity.

Are you a Zen SEO master and want to share a few tips in private settings? How much do you think that information is worth? You can set the price and the times and wait for people to line up to have Huddlewoo sessions with you. Maybe you’re a great baker and want to share some kitchen tips for making the best cupcakes, you can do that too. Whatever you are extraordinary at and willing to share (even for money) can be added in your profile and easily discovered by other members of the Huddlewoo community.

This unique video, mentoring, online class hybrid, startup opens up in alpha today. We got a chance to talk with the Huddlewoo team as they prepared for their alpha launch.

Check out the interview below.

SXSW Eco 2012 – NJ Startup: Staxxon Dynamic Container Systems

New Jersey/Ohio startup Staxxon is working to address one of the largest inefficiencies in the logistics industry – the empty shipping container. Every year hundreds of millions of shipping containers are shipped empty taking up space, using valuable natural resources, and wearing out equipment.

According to Tom Stitt, Staxxon’s corporate development director, the company’s founder was inspired to begin working on a new container design while driving one of his daughters to college. “George [Kochanowski] kept seeing piles of containers [along the roadway] and thought there had to be a better way to deal with them than stacking them high,” says Stitt. ¹

Staxxon has created an “accordian-like” shipping container that can be folded to 1/5 it’s size. This allows 5 empty containers to take up the space of just one container. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how this could significantly alter the practices of logistics companies. Each container takes up space on trucks, trains, and container ships, as well as shipping yards. In April of this year they received a CSC Certificate for its 20′ container design and was issued the BIC registration code STXU for its test and trial containers. Below we have an in-person demonstration of the benefits via legos:

More details regarding Staxxon’s Dynamic Container Systems from their FAQ:

What technology and products is Staxxon developing?

Staxxon has developed, patented, prototype and obtained certification for a shipping container design that allows up to 5 empty containers to be folded, nested and moved in the same space as 1 container. In addition, Staxxon is developing an integrated system to support high speed folding/nesting and unfolding/un-nesting at terminals and depots that includes support for space/slot optimized freight bookings and related terminal/depot/ship/rail/truck workflow information technology.

Who will be Staxxon’s customers?

Staxxon will license its container, folding nesting system and related information technology to its customers. This means that a container fleet owner/operators – carriers, leasing companies, governments – can continue to work with existing container vendors/manufacturers. Terminal/depot operators will be able to source the folding/nesting system from current suppliers. leading freight booking and terminal operating system providers will be able to integrate Staxxon’s information technology.

How much does Staxxon’s technology cost? How much will a container with Staxxon technology cost?

Staxxon’s business model is based on licensing its intellectual property, designs and know-how, not manufacturing. Container fleet owner/operators will continue to source containers from their current vendors at prices negotiated by the fleet owners/operators. Staxxon will support existing container manufacturers with assembly line configuration, sourcing, training, inspections and certification services. Staxxon’s target cost for a container that includes Staxxon technology is in a range that provides the container fleet owner/operator a 100% return on the total investment, including operating costs unique to Staxxon’s technology, over a 24-30 month period. *Emphasis mine

LINKAGE

Staxxon homepage

The official Lego Video

Startups from Everywhere Else finally have a conference for them

Sports Fans Find Your Out Of Town Bar With Cleveland Startup: BackerBar

You see the tweets, Facebook mentions and Google+ messages all the time, someone in your timeline is out of town and wants to catch their favorite game at a team friendly bar. After all you don’t want to go into just any sports bar in Baltimore Maryland and ask to put on the Steeler’s game. Those special bars are what this Cleveland startup refers to as “BackerBar’s” which is where their name came from.

The team at BackerBar came up with this clever little definition:

backerbar: [n.] /ޖbakər/ bär/ – a bar that supports, or ‘backs’, a team foreign to the local market. Support can range from just a banner or two hanging up, or on game days packed wall to wall with fans wearing the teams’ jerseys…even the bartenders! Bar owners can choose to support a professional and/or college team. Examples include an Ohio State BackerBar in Chicago, Dallas Cowboys BackerBar in Los Angeles, or USC Trojans BackerBar in Boston. The combinations of teams/cities can be endless. We cover the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, as well as NCAA football and basketball.

As you can see if you’re a sports fan this is a very important startup. BackerBar has developed a gigantic database and interactive web based platform so that any traveling or transplanted sports fan can find out where their team’s “backer bar” is. They also told us in the interview below, that naturally a mobile app is in the works. No more worries about getting laughed, at made fun of or even injured for supporting your own team. You’ll find that special backer bar with BackerBar.

In the interview below BackerBar co-founder Michael Stratis talks about their startup and also building a startup in Cleveland which has become a town full of startups and innovation. In fact one of the biggest organizations that supports startups and entrepreneurs, Jumpstart Inc, is also based in Cleveland.

Check out the interview below:

To Ship Or Not To Ship, That’s This Weeks Just Decide Startup Dilemma Of The Week

As you may already know nibletz.com the voice of startups “everywhere else” has partnered with New York startup JustDecide for the Startup Dilemma Of The Week. In this feature we use a dilemma that a startup from “everywhere else” has faced in the startup process. We then take that dilemma and crowdsource advice for the startup sing the JustDecide platform at JustDecide.com

This week’s Startup Dilemma Of The Week, is a dilemma that many startups face. It has to do with, when do you launch. It was brought to us by Columbus startup Resition which we featured earlier this week. Resition is a web based platform that helps displaced (laid off) workers transition to new positions.

As the startups co-founder, Mike Chapman, has explained; Resition was functionally ready to go. It is also a much needed platform. There is a direct problem, and a growing problem, that Resition handles for displaced workers. The platform runs smoothly but the design is a little rough around the edges and the feature set that Chapman hoped to roll out is still growing.

Startups across the country and around the world face this very problem every day; ” To Ship, or Not To Ship”. With statistics about startups working against all of us, the decision on when to ship your final, consumer facing product, can prove vital to a startups success. You don’t want to leave an “alpha” or a “beta” tag up too long or people grow doubtful that you will ever finish your product.

You also don’t want to pull the trigger to early. An incomplete design or a feature flaw can make a user go away and never come back.

Conversely, pitching your startup to people, crowds and investors can be exhilarating. When an entrepreneur comes up with an idea for a startup and then gets a team to buy into that idea, the internal clock starts ticking immediately. When can I get the product out.

Head on over to the Startup Dilemma Of The Week feature at justdecide.com here and help weigh in on the decision making process. Remember for the purpose of this great educational feature for startups, you need to go here to comment and weigh in. It only takes a minute and you may need the same community help one day and it’s free.

If you have a startup dilemma of the week send it to startups@nibletz.com and we’ll get in touch with you about featuring your dilemma.

JustDecide.com founder Jay Amato is working to perfect justdecide.com and they recently launched this survey, when you have a second weigh in on that as well.

Linkage:

Check out previous startup dilemmas of the week here

Check out the justdecide.com survey information here

Are you a startup “everywhere else” then you need to be here

Columbus Ohio Startup: Resition Easing The Layoff Process INTERVIEW

Do we even need to say something like “Getting laid off is one of the hardest things in the world”. Probably not. Getting laid off is a fact of life though, especially in these trying economic times. There’s no way to sugar coat the lay off process but what happens immediately afterwards is crucial to the laid off employee.

Historically, the longer a laid off employee waits to start the next job hunt, the harder it gets. As time goes on people who are laid off tend to get disengaged from the work life experience and also disheartened by their lack of leads. Often times this is because people who have been laid off don’t know exactly where to go.

This is where Columbus startup Resition comes in. Resition is a platform created by Mike Chapman (CEO), Chris Domino (CTO) and Walter Akana (COO), to help facilitate a transition to another job and ease the blow of getting laid off. Resition is actually paid for by the company that is doing the layoffs. Adding Resition at the time of separation allows the companies that are laying people off to give those people access to career coaches, mentoring, and a socially driven job search. The companies then get valuable analytic data back from Resition that can help them manage the morale at the company for the remaining employees.

While the job displacement space is definitely not a sexy one, Chapman and his team have left no stone unturned and have made sure that Resition does exactly what they’ve set out to do.

How is it done? We got a chance to interview Chapman. Check out the interview below:

Cleveland Startup: CollegeSkinny Gives You The Skinny To Apply To College

The college application process can be a long and daunting task. Yesterday we brought you the story about a startup in New York that helps high school students prepare for college by offering a platform to find extra-curricular activities outside of the school. Today, while this story is about a college focused startup, it to is more about pre-enrolled high school students.

Cleveland based startup CollegeSkinny provides incoming students everything they need to know about the colleges they want to apply to. It also helps them keep all their prospective college applications and information organized so that they can continue to access it until the time comes to make a decision.

According to founder and CEO Bryant Hardy:

“Students browse colleges and Universities hosted on the CollegeSkinny network and learn everything from How to Apply all the way to the specific Greek Life organizations on campus and everything in between. We also provide interactive tools for the schools themselves to recruit and connect with potential students.

Our features include: How to Apply, Important Dates, Where to Live, What’s on Campus, College Process, Greek Life, Packing Checklist, Meal Plans, Things to Know, and The CollegeSkinny Connection (feature that provides a link between a student and the University).”

The entire focus of CollegeSkinny is to help transitioning high school students, pick and then transition into college. To get a better perspective on what CollegeSkinny is all about we interviewed Hardy below:

Find The Best CrowdFunding Site Using Columbus Startup: StandOffer

CrowdFunding is taking the world by storm. There are traditional crowdfunding, artist crowdfunding, project crowdfunding, tuition crowdfunding, civic crowdfunding, fundraising crowdfunding sites popping up everywhere. We’re expecting even more crowdfunding concepts to come out of the woodwork in the next two years. There are even crowdfunding sites to invest in startups, starting pop up now in anticipation of the JOBSAct regulations that should be released around the first part of the year.

A startup based in the “Cool Tech” city of Columbus Ohio, called StandOffer, is setting out to make the troves and troves of crwodfunding sites easier to navigate. Using their proprietary algorithmic system, dubbed “crowd control” StandOffer is going to connect users with the crowdfunding site that will work best for them and their needs. You may think your project is great for Kickstarter, but StandOffer may know there’s a different site out there for it. StandOffer would then show you what to do to move forward.

The founding team at StandOffer has been working closely with crowdfunding startups everywhere to insure that they offer the best, most up to date data, and an easy way for people to apply for crowdfunding across multiple sites that fit their goals.

StandOffer is like a hotels.com for crowdfunding sites and it could not have come at a better time.

We got a chance to talk with Mason Estep the founder of StandOffer in the interview below:

Interview With Youngstown Ohio Startup: CampusShift.com

There is over $1 trillion dollars of student loan debt these days and with the economy in the situation that it’s currently in, it’s getting harder and harder for students to manage and payback that debt.

A Youngstown Ohio startup called CampusShift doesn’t have a secret recipe to make that debt disappear, but rather offers a set of tools that will help college students attack the student loan problem from a variety of directions. Whether you’re looking to make college costs more manageable by saving money on textbooks and other supplies. Or if you’re looking to make more money in college by starting your own business (startup) CampusShift has tools to go either route.

CampusShift has four distinct areas. It starts with a place to save money and compare costs on textbooks. There’s a social networking element available to students, that’s free of course. Campus area businesses can offer daily deals, discounts and rewards to students. Finally, CampusShift offers resources to those students that want to try their luck at their own startup business and test it within the confines of the school with minimal risk.

We got a chance to talk with Chris Haynes, co-founder of CampusShift, who was consequently the first one since we started this interview series (with well over 500 startups interviewed) who followed our instructions completely. So it’s with great honor we give you our interview with Chris Haynes of CampusShift.

Startup Weekend Toledo Coming September 14-16th Further Validates Ohio’s Startup Ecosystem

By now most everyone who visits nibletz.com knows exactly what an officially sanctioned Startup Weekend is. As a refresher though, Startup Weekend is a 54 hour hackathon event where entrepreneurs, developers, designers and local business mentors gather to build companies in one weekend. The officially branded “Startup Weekend” events are organized in partnership with Startup Weekend based in Seattle. The organization has put on nearly 500 events worldwide.

Startup Weekend is headed to Toledo in just a couple of weeks. This will be the first officially sanctioned Startup Weekend event in Toledo however the state of Ohio is no stranger to the concept. Startup Weekends have already occurred in Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland.

Since Toledo is new to the Startup Weekend concept, the organizers are holding an orientation style event on September 6th. The mixer will be held at Seed Coworking 25 South Saint Clair Street in downtown Toledo from 5:30-7:30. Interested entrepreneurs, designers, and developers should attend this event to comingle with other like minded individuals and meet the local organizers.

Toledo Ohio Startup: Buyvite Closes Funding Round Looks Forward To Expansion

Our good friend Brandi Wimberly and her group buying startup, Buyvite, have just finished closing a funding round. This unique startup makes creating makeshift buying groups easy to do and easy to collect.

No we aren’t talking about some crazy Groupon, group buying platform, we’re talking a much more practical use. Picture you and your cousins, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters are all putting their money together to buy grandma and grandpa an anniversary cruise. You know how this traditionally goes, one coordinator puts their money on the line for the entire trip and all of a sudden everyone has a problem making the payment.

ANother great example is say you and your college buddies decide to take a group trip to a baseball game. Same thing, one person is holding the bag. No longer, not with BuyVite.

Buyvite lets you pull money together for one thing, it makes collecting the money a cinch and then one administrator can take the collected money for the group purchase. Pretty smart huh?

That’s what the investors must have thought because Wimberly reports that she has closed a funding round and plans to expand Buyvite’s markets infrastructure, mobile platform and management team.

“Now that we have successfully closed this round of financing, we can aggressively and confidently pursue retail partners who are interested and willing to participate in this socially relevant and expanding piece of the marketplace in which to further drive their products and services to and through. Buyvite is a new and exciting way to capture this evolving and growing segment of the social payments audience and we are extremely confident that the retail community will seize and embrace this new opportunity. We’re also excited to be approaching some new high growth market opportunities that have so far been largely ignored by the social commerce space.” Wimberly said in a statement.

“Our recent investment will also allow us to add new functionality and pivot our product to more closely align with consumer and retailer feedback and feature requests. Our investors and advisors are very focused on retail business development and brand building but also respect the technology we are crafting and overall product execution. Among our investors and advisors are experienced business leaders with a wide range of talents that can help us achieve our goal of being the leading group payment platform for retailers. We are lucky to have such an amazing group of people helping to build this company.” Wimberly added.

Buyvite also announced the addition of Bob Mallo and Brad Bialas to the management team. Mallo will assist in strategic formation, operational direction and company wide execution. Most recently Mallo was the Group President of Follett Educational Distribution Group and President of Follett Educational Services prior to that. Bialas will help develop sales, marketing, and pricing models as well as strategic partners. Bialas has been in the payments space for 12 years, most recently as the President of BluePay (a large payment processing software provider) where he helped the company grow from 3 employees and nominal revenue to over $100MM in annual sales. Buyvite Advisors include Vijay Raghavendra of IBM, Balaji Gopinath of Turner Broadcasting and Media Camp, Jacob Tell of Oniracom and Poornima Vijayashanker of Bizeebee Software.

This undisclosed funding round was led by Rocket Ventures.

Linkage:

Check out Buyvite here

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Columbus OH Startup: Brand Thunder Connects Brands With Fans’ Browsers

As the smartphone gains popularity more and more smartphone users are making their phone more personal with themes, wall papers and skins. Sure you can change your computer wallpaper, and you’ve been able to forever, but with smartphones, themes became totally immersive. Now all of the sudden your favorite sports teams, celebrities and even brands took over.

A Columbus OH startup called Brand Thunder, is creating that experience for your web browser. Now a fan of just about anything can trick out their FireFox,Chrome or even Internet Explorer (people still use that?) browser. The background, buttons and just about every corner of your browser is transformed into the theme of your choice. The only browser they don’t currently support is Safari.

While Brand Thunder offers themes from most of the major sports teams, celebrities, news, and holidays, what they also offer is the ability to brand businesses in a new and immersive way. Now a really cool startup or company can use BrandThunder to make their own custom theme that doesn’t just turn the browser into a great advertising and branding vehicle, but it also allows end users to connect with information in a variety of ways for the brand.

We got a chance to interview Brand Thunder, check out the interview below:

Bizdom Cleveland Startup Accelerator Gets A New Bizdom

Bizdom is a startup accelerator program with locations in Detroit and Cleveland. Both Detroit and Cleveland have growing entrepreneurial and startup ecosystems, where Bizdom’s program and facilities naturally fit in.

Bizdom was launched in Cleveland by one of their biggest tech startups turned successful giant companies, Quicken Loans Inc,and Chairman Dan Gilbert’s Rock Ventures. Gilbert is passionate about technology, entrepreneurship and Cleveland is also the majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The Bizdom program is actually one of the earlier startup accelerator programs. They hold three month sessions and provide startup companies, selected for their program, with $25,000 seed investments for 8% equity. Startups selected for the Bizdom program at either location are given office space, internet access, access to a wide variety of mentors, business services and other perks.

The Cleveland program has been operating out of the Quicken Loans Web Center inside the MK Ferguson Building at Quicken Loans Arena. Now they’re moving to their own 7,000 square foot space at 250 W. Huron Road in the 250 Huron Building. The Bizdom Cleveland headquarters will be inside the five story commercial building which sits directly below the Ritz Carlton Cleveland Hotel.

“Establishing our Cleveland headquarters at 250 Huron solidifies Bizdom as an anchor in the city’s growing tech hub,” said Ross Sanders, chief executive officer of Bizdom. “Much like our Detroit headquarters, we have designed a collaborative and dynamic space that fosters an atmosphere for our entrepreneurs to truly excel,” he said.

The Detroit Bizdom location moved to a new headquarters in the Madison building in Detroit back in March. Space is one of the values that is very important to Gilbert which explains why both locations have relocated prior to their next session.

“The opportunity came open at the Madison and part of Dan Gilbert’s vision is that place matters,” says Maria LaLonde, Bizdom’s recruiting and development leader told XConomy about the Detroit move. “We’re trying to create a great tech community where our entrepreneurs are closer to mentors, closer to funding sources, and can collaborate in an open workspace.”

Both locations offer four seasonal sessions a year and have graduated over 50 startups.

Linkage

Check out Bizdom here

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

The nibletz team could really use your help

JustDecide Startup Dilemma Of The Week: Foundersync Founder Wants To Know, Patent or Not To Patent

If you haven’t heard about the JustDecide/Nibletz Startup Dilemma Of The Week then you’ve been missing out on a great feature here at nibletz.com. Every week we partner with crowd sourced decision making platform justdecide.com to help one chosen startup handle an actual real life dilemma that they are going through in the startup process.

There are definitely some great advantages for startup founders in participating in this free feature that takes less than a minute to contribute.

– The founder of the featured dilemma’s startup gets great feedback from members of the startup community
– Members of the startup community get to contribute to a crowdsourced answer from like-minded individuals
– Founders who weigh in on the dilemma may actually be going through the same or similar problem that they can use the same advice for.

This week’s dilemma comes from our good friend Ryan Gambrill the founder of FounderSync in Cleveland Ohio. Fourdersync is a great way for startup founders to get involved and meet other founders whether it be technical founders, biz dev people or other entrepreneurs. From there you can network with great people who are living the same startup lifestyle you are.

Gambrill’s dilemma is actually about a new startup idea he is working on. He has a dilemma that tons of startup founders face, to patent or not to patent. While Gambrill thinks his idea is great, he’s a realist so he knows that it may not take off. If for some reason, the idea doesn’t take off, than Gambrill would potentially be out thousands of dollars in legal and patent fees.

What makes this tough for Gambrill though is he’s a networking pro, a people person and loves to talk. He’s one of those guys that doesn’t believe in “stealth mode” and as such he needs to protect his idea if it’s going to be out there.

A patent isn’t like a copyright. We all know the “poor man’s copyright” and for songs or published works the process takes under $50 and under 15 minutes. A patent can cost thousands. This patent problem of Gamrbill’s is something we hear about all the time on the “sneaker strapped nationwide startup roadtrip” and unfortunately we’ve seen both sides of the issue.

We’ve seen first hand entrepreneurs who have blown their entire savings on a patent for an idea that totally fizzled. We’ve also seen entrepreneurs who went the non patent route and got screwed by a competitor.

What say you startup community?

Weigh in here at justdecide.com

Checkout Foundersync here, sign up it’s free!

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