Techstars Chicago Reveals First Class!

Techstars Chicago revealed their first class today. Back in February Techstars announced that Excelerate Labs the Chicago based accelerator that operates out of the 1871 space was becoming TechStars Chicago. They began taking applications at that time and announced the first cohort on Thursday.

This first official “Techstars Chicago” class will start May 28th and end on August 28th. TechStars Chicago participants will receive a round of seed funding, work space, an intense startup curriculum and mentorship from one of the best accelerator mentor networks in the world.

As with all the Techstars classes there is a wide range of startups across SoLoMo, healthcare, big data, analytics and even fitness.

Here is a complete list of the 10 startups that made it into the first Chicago cohort, as originally posted on the Techstars blog.

CaptureProof – The platform through which patients can securely and easily share photos and videos with their doctors.

HIPOM – A cloud-based solution that gives parents total control of the Internet access on all devices in the home.

Nexercise – A mobile app that makes fitness fun through the use of friendly competition, smart alerts and real rewards.

Pathful – A Web analytics platform that captures every visitor interaction with every element on a website automatically, making it easier for marketers and designers to understand visitor behavior.

Peoplematics – A cloud-based search platform that unlocks the data users store in the cloud with intuitive search and sharing across applications.

Project Fixup – A digital matchmaker that fixes people up on fun one-on-one dates.

SimpleRelevance – An analytics-driven email marketing platform that provides customized digital communication for every customer and every message.

SocialCrunch – The marketing data provider presents a new way to unlock the most provocative human insights for brands and their agencies.

Sqord, Inc. – The fitness platform that makes healthy, active play more fun for kids by allowing them to compete and earn points for everyday activities.

TradingView – A browser-based community for investors and traders to share and discuss their ideas.

Check out these other startup accelerator stories.

Ashton Kutcher Set To Return To TechCrunch Disrupt NYC

Coming through the pages of the startupmemphis blog by Commercial Appeal James Dowd I was pleasantly surprised to read that Ashton Kutcher would be returning to the main stage next week at TechCrunch Disrupt.

The annual Disrupt event held in New York City is one of the most talked about startup events on the east coast. Hundreds of startups vie for the opportunity to present in the highly coveted startup alley and even more apply to pitch on the Disrupt Battlefield. Startups lucky enough to be chosen to compete on the battlefield go up against some of the hardest judges that New York and Silicon Valley have to offer.

The battlefield startups are competing for a $50,000 prize but much more importan than the cash is the chance to say that your startup placed in the battlefield competition. For a startup closing a funding round down, that may be the extra push they need to make it over the top.

In the four years that we’ve covered Disrupt NY (once as Nibletz 3 as TDG) we’ve seen great startups on the battlefield stage and a collection of the best fireside chats in the world. Except for Disrupt SF 2011, some of the best have been hosted by Mike Arrington.

Two years ago at Disrupt NYC Ashton Kutcher sat down with Charlie Rose. This was right as he was making the transition to his new role on Two and a Half Men and questions about the show were strictly off limits. Instead Rose and Kutcher discussed his VC firm, which just two years ago, people were still concerned that actors were making a mockery of the venture capital model.

Since then Kutcher has proven himself. Through his A-Grade investments he’s backed startups like 2011 Disrupt battlefield winner GetAround, Sonic Notify, Fab and Tiny Chat. Through his own angel investments Kutcher has backed AirBnB, DuoLingo, Summly and Dwolla.

This year he returns to the main stage to chat about A-Grade’s investment strategy and portfolio. While Two And A Half Men was off limits TechCrunch Editor In Chief Eric Eldon says he may end up talking about his role as Steve Jobs in the biopic film that debuted at Sundance.

5 Startups In Alabama Competing For $100,000 As Part Of Launch Pad Competition

Alabama’s startup supporters have put their money where there mouth is as the current Alabama Launch Pad competition prepares to come to a close late next week.

Alabama’s Launch Pad competition began in 2005 and gives early stage startups and small businesses a chance to compete for much needed funding that can help spark a company to the next level.

The current competition saw 12 startups compete in a pitch off style competition on March 3rd which initially cut the number of teams down to 7. They then had another “market assessment” which narrowed the field to five. Those five remaining teams will compete in a finale on May 3rd which will determine how much of the $100,000 prize each team will get.

“Our goal is to really feed the pipeline for early stage startups. Having just one competition per year is not enough,” Angela Wier told the Birmingham Business Journal. “What we would like to do is run a pre-seed four times per year, but we can’t leap to that overnight.”

The Economic Development Partnership Of Alabama raises the Launch Pad prize money from the private sector, the Alabama Research Alliance and seven Alabama Universities.

Launch Pad Programs Director Greg Sheek is hopeful that they will raise additional funds to run another program this year, possibly targeting “speed up” startups.

One of the challenges that Sheek and Wier are working with is that 50% of the money coming out of the Birmingham based Central Alabama Angel Network is going to out of state companies. Both are hoping to curb that by giving more companies access to programming that will prepare them better for pitching investor.

“We want to get in a place where we’d like to prepare more and more companies to pitch to the investment community and keep them right here,” Wier said.

Alabama ranks as one of the friendliest cities to small business, read that story here!

Interview With Al Leston, On The Wall, A Community’s Digital Story Board [OneSpark]

Al Leston is the host of the popular NPR documentary series, State Of The Re-Union. The NPR documentary style show has Leston going into communities across the country and chronicling the world around him. The show highlights, what makes the community.

Leston was on hand at the OneSpark crowdfunding festiva showing the next extension of State Of The Re-Union, a gigantic, digital tablet based wall. “The Wall” is an installation piece that he hopes to have setup in busy, high traffic areas in a town or city.

“bus stops, court yards, plazas and downtown street corners” are locations that Leston has in mind for this gigantic piece of interactive story telling art.

Just like SOTRU, The Wall will open up dialogue between people with different ways of life and different perspectives, promoting understanding and encouraging conflict resolution. If we can be connected with others in different regions, with different cultures, we will have a better chance of creating solutions to pressing issues. We will become better listeners. We will increase empathy.

The Wall challenges how media inhabits our space. The Internet is an ether, as intangible as it is infinite. But we have trapped ourselves – become idle, passive voyeurs of media. The Wall will surprise us. The Wall will touch us. The Wall will change us. And we will have the power to change The Wall. – From the OneSpark profile page.

In meeting Leston he was genuine, concerned about communities and extremely creative. A video loop showing throughout the week at his OneSpark booth showed what he hopes to create with the end result of the wall. He wants people in cities, towns and community’s to take a moment and discover the stories that are being home grown.

The community aspect, creativity and merged use of technology, in “installation art” are what made The Wall the top vote getter in the technology category during the OneSpark festival.

Find out more about Leston’s State of The Reunion program here.

We’ve got over 30 startup stories from OneSpark here.

ReThreaded The Social Startup That Won The Most Votes At OneSpark [video]

ReThreaded,Social entrepreneurship,social startup,Florida startup,OneSpark,Kristin Keen

(photo: NMI 2013)

Last Wednesday OneSpark, the World’s Crowdfunding Festival kicked off in Jacksonville Florida. It was five days of creators, entrepreneurship, artists and startups. The creators, and entrepreneurs came from all different categories and all different walks of life.

During the opening ceremonies, led by voice of the Jacksonville Jaguars, Brian Sexton, we were given a glimpse of what was to come. Sexton invited random creators to raise their hands and come up and pitch their creation, business or startup to the crowd. Each of the five creators had 90 seconds to deliver an on the spot pitch. One of those pitches was Kristin Keen the founder of Rethreaded.

Rethreaded is a social startup that puts women who’ve suffered some of the worst abuse known to humans, sex trafficking, human trafficking and prostitution, and gives them a new sense of life, and worth through business, artistry and employment. Keen spoke to the crowd with a genuine passion. She had spent five years of her life in India where she helped empower women who had suffered the same kind of abuse through teaching them to sew.

Keen told Florida’s First Coast News that when she got back home to Jacksonville she couldn’t sit still she wanted to do something to continue her mission, and that she did.

She started Rethreaded, which crafts children’s clothes out of used t-shirts. So not only is she putting women who need a lift up a place to work and be creative, but she’s also upcycling t-shirts.

Little did she know when she pitched her company on Wednesday afternoon that she would be the runaway vote leader at the end of the week. She also didn’t know what was in store for her just a few moments later.

After all five creators had pitched, OneSpark volunteers handed out sealed white envelopes. Sexton informed the crowd that in those envelopes (which we weren’t allowed to look in) were $1 and $5 bills, $1000 dollars worth. The crowd was instructed to find the creators who just pitched outside of the creator lounge tent and hand over the envelope. Like me, many of the crowd didn’t even look in the envelopes.

I had made a core group of new friends at OneSpark and silently we all took our envelopes and walked over to find Kristin. We weren’t alone. She won that contest by a landslide.

The OneSpark staff did daily updates at 5:30pm each evening to inform the crowd of who the biggest movers in voting were and sure enough on Saturday evening Rethreaded was the biggest mover.

Their OneSpark booth was a hut constructed out of used t-shirts, which made a great make-shift shelter when the rain came pouring down Saturday afternoon.

Keen was one of the greatest creators we met. She was extremely kind and humble and we’re pretty sure she wasn’t even expecting the win. I caught a glimpse of Keen in her hut on Saturday afternoon, tearing up telling a group of passerbys that she never expected the outpouring of support she received at OneSpark.

Naturally I was gunning for a tech startup to win the overall vote during the five days of crowd voting, but I couldn’t be more pleased that the top vote went to Kristin Keen and Re-Threaded, a social entrepreneur with a heart of gold. With the most votes, Rethreaded took home $6,768.42 of the $250,000 crowdfunding prize. Event registrants voted for one creator using the OneSpark app and the money was distributed evenly among the top vote getters.

You can see how genuine Keen is in her 90 second pitch below:

Find out more about Rethreaded here.

Here’s over 30 more startup stories from OneSpark.

Jeff Bezos Just Crapped On Netflix, Roku,and Boxee: Developers, Startups Get Ready

Bloomberg has reported that Amazon’s stock price has gone up and then slightly flattened this afternoon and Netflix has definitely felt stemming from an announcement Amazon made today.

Amazon, the company that essentially created the e-commerce category, or at least heavily refined it, announced today that they are going to start offering their own set top box. In the same way that Google and other tablet manufacturers grew quickly concerned about the ramifications stemming from the Kindle Fire tablets, the set top box manufacturers now have something to worry about.

The Seattle based company will now offer a box that competes with the likes of Apple TV, Roku, Boxee, NetGear and even some options offered by console gaming system. Currently, several of these competitive boxes offer Amazon’s video subscription service that comes free for Amazon Prime members.

Just as Google has added a wide range of other services beyond it’s huge search platform, Amazon has continued to grow into a complete e-commerce ecosystem. Of course they want customers to continue to engage with their bread and butter, e-commerce business, but now they are able to engage customers in more intimate ways.

Amazon built their Kindle Fire tablet line based on the Android operating system and then created their own completely walled garden ecosystem that offers their tablet users access to apps,games, e-books, movies and music all through the Amazon e-commerce platform. Many analysts say this was a great move on their part.

This move also opens up a whole new platform for developers to get behind and support. Apple TV is an extremely hard platform for developers to get into and many feel that Android, and it’s hundreds of available devices and fragmented OS is tough to penetrate market share.

Developers and perhaps startups will now be able to work on the Amazon set top box ecosystem to offer apps, games and other downloadables to compliment the content platform that will be in place at launch.

Amazon has built up a tremendously loyal following over the last two decades. They have also been instrumental in moving some customers from books, to e-readers and now to tablets. With this huge set of customers, an Amazon set top box will be a much more comfortable platform, rather than going with the boxes that are currently on the market.

NetFlix, a huge content delivery company, will now have to compete with Amazon because it’s not likely the Amazon box will carry the NetFlix app. Also, first run movies and TV seasons tend to take longer to get into the NetFlix system than say Amazon’s video delivery service or even iTunes. This will give Amazon a huge competitive advantage.

Amazon also plans to create their own content, a model that’s proven very successful for NetFlix with their in house produced series like House of Cards and Hemlock Grove.

Have you seen our startup coverage from “everywhere else”

Indy Couple Getting Their Grit & Grind On At Memphis’ Seed Hatchery Accelerator

Memphis’ Seed Hatchery accelerator is less than a month away from demo day for their third cohort of startups. This years class has some major standouts and Boosterville is one of them.

Boosterville was founded as Sodbuster by married couple Pam and Tom Cooper. The Cooper’s hale from Indianapolis Indiana and they are the only “out of town” team for this years Seed Hatchery class. I met Pam Cooper on Brad Feld’s alternative to Hacker News, the Startup Revolution Hub. Meeting woman entrepreneurs is nothing new these days however Pam and Tom admittedly have adult children, sometimes older than the other founders on the Startup Revolution Hub, and the other founders at Seed Hatchery.

I quickly struck up an online friendship with Pam that resulted in her presenting at the startup conference and facilitated an introduction into the Seed Hatchery program.

What makes the Coopers even more interesting is that Tom is the founding CTO of Cha-Cha and has been a distinguished CTO for the last 30 years. While I wouldn’t call them “startup rich” the Cooper’s have done well. Pam founded a successful cleaning business. Tom has hit a few doubles and triples in his career. Tom enjoys flying his prop plane when he can pull away from the computer screen.

That’s what makes Cooper’s truly unique. They aren’t in the Seed Hatchery program for the seed investment (which of course helps any startup, Boosterville included), they are in it for the grit and grind and the whirlwind business training that happens during a three month, intensive accelerator program.

While Pam sometimes jokes about being the “class mom” with this year’s Seed Hatchery, they work with the best of them, until late hours of the night and back again first thing in the morning. Tom made arrangements with his development job in Indianapolis to work from Memphis every morning before working on Boosterville.

So what is Boosterville?

It’s a new platform that combines the mobile wallet with a loyalty and rewards type program that benefits local schools. Pam and Tom grew tired of neighborhood kids hitting them up with the same popcorn tins, wrapping paper and World’s Finest Chocolate bars. The school fundraiser was destined for a disruption.

Boosterville has partnered with Peabody Elementary in mid-town Memphis and merchants in the Overton Square and Cooper Young neighborhoods for their beta testing.

The Boosterville mobile app is tied in with local merchants and local schools who have agreed to give a kickback to the school of the user’s choice when they checkout with the Boosterville mobile wallet. The Cooper’s live on the cusp of new technology, and to that end, where others have used Paypal or Google Wallet for checkout, Boosterville uses fellow midwestern startup Dwolla as it’s wallet back bone.

Dwolla’s founder Ben Milne knows Tom well and is very enthusiastic about what Boosterville is doing.

Despite their age, and experience, Boosterville is treated the same way every other startup in the Seed Hatchery class is treated. They’ve been going up and down in the weekly rankings like every other startup and they went through a name change and a couple pivots during the past two months.

Boosterville will graduate from the Seed Hatchery program on demo day which is May 16th and will coincide with the Memphis in May festivities. For more info on Boosterville visit boosterville.com.

Find more startup news from the south east here.

Florida Startup Musical Math Number Line Has An Innovative Approach to Teaching Math

Florida teacher turned entrepreneur Deb Bowers has an innovative, musical way to teach students adding and subtracting positive and negative numbers. She’s put it all to music and song using one of FAO Schwartz most popular toys.

Long gone are the days that one has to travel all the way to New York City to see FAO Schwartz signature toys. You know the ones made famous by many New York based Christmas movies including Home Alone. Toys-R-Us has created an FAO Schwartz section in all of their stores and one of their most popular toys from the brand is a gigantic piano kids can walk and jump on.Think Nintendo power pad meets keyboard.

Well Bowers has created a way to use that piano toy, affix a number chart on top and teach kids to add and subtract positive and negative numbers, while performing a song.

Musical Math Numberline comes with everything a parent needs to teach this method at home, except for the piano itself. You can either order it from Bowers’ site via a link to Toys R Us or go to your local Toys R us and pick it up. The numberline comes with the overlay for the piano along with a song book that is filled not only with songs, but songs composed by performing math problems.

To get the entire gist of the idea you should watch the video below. Bowers said she got the idea from her students. She would put masking tape on the floor and have them move about the front of the room adding and subtracting positive and negative numbers. Some students suggested that there had to be a way they could add music to it, so Bowers did.

She just showed off the idea at OneSpark the World’s Crowdfunding Festival where she hoped to get a jump start on bringing the company out to a bigger market. She told us there were lots of interested people that came to see her at her booth and that she was going to continue with Musical Math Numberline regardless of whether she was one of the companies to get funded at the event.

Check out the video below. You can find out more at musicalmathnumberline.com

Here are even more startup stories from OneSpark!

Portland Startup AboutUs’ Founder Finds Greener Pastures In The TLD Space

Ray King, a life long technology nut and a prominent Portland entrepreneur is venturing out on his latest startup.

King is the founder, and still a board member for AboutUs. When the site launched it was an editable encyclopedia of websites across the world, somewhat similar to Wikipedia. With a great domain name and a successful entrepreneur at the helm AboutUs was able to raise $5.1 million dollars from backers including Voyager Capital.

Despite putting his best effort forth, and getting funding, King wasn’t able to find the sweet spot for a scalable AboutUs to become a sustainable business. It pivoted several times and now AboutUs is a service that helps businesses evaluate their online marketing strategies.

“We were never able to get the formula right,” King said to OregonLive.com. “I was not able to get it to break out in the way that I had hoped.” King continued, “I was gradually getting into a more conservative mindset,” and added, “and maybe not the right guy to bring it forward.”

King’s latest venture is a new company called Top Level Design. He is hoping to ultimately become a domain registrar for the new top level domains that are waiting for approval. King has applied for .blog, .gay, .photography and .wiki. Based on the success of these top level domains, we will probably see King’s company apply for even more.

“It’s going to change the complexion of the Internet,” he said, “at least the naming complexion of the Internet, quite a bit.”

Source: OregonLive

This startup will help you conquer your bucketlist

Nashville Courting New Startup Accelerator,From Silicon Valley, Hattery!

Hattery,Entrepreneur Center, Michael Burcham,Nashville startup,startup,startup news

Hattery strategist, and Engine Advocacy co-founder Michael McGeary (photo: hattery.com)

Nashville’s Entrepreneur Centre Director, Michael Burcham, played host to Mike McGeary, a strategist with Silicon Valley innovation lab, Hattery.

Currently the Hattery has a west coast location in Silicon Valley and an east coast location in New York City. Hattery invests in early stage startups and helps the startups with support in design, engineering and business development.

If you think you’ve heard McGeary’s name before it’s because you probably have. In addition to being a strategist with Hattery, McGeary is also the co-founder and chief political strategist with Engine Advocacy a group connecting startup founders and entrepreneurs with government officials to create change in the entrepreneurial/startup space. They were recently intricate in a startup pilgrimage to congress. McGeary also worked with TuneIn and on two presidential campaigns.

Hattery is looking to take their unique model to another state and Nashville seems to have caught McGeary’s eye.

“There is a great energy here and I’ve read about it and heard about it because Nashville has been really good about talking about its success stories,” McGeary told the Nashville Business Journal during the Nashville Technology Council’s TechVille event. He continued; “It has been really fun and interesting to see the companies created here, how the community is being built in a really unique way. I think there is a lot of growth potential here.”

Burcham, who is one of Nashville’s biggest advocates for entrepreneurship and startups as well as the leader for Startup Tennessee, Startup America’s Tennessee region and the second region in the United States, characterized the possibility of Hattery relocating to Nashville as a “giant deal”.

“He already works with so many investors and organizations in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, so for us to have someone sitting here that has access to those places, that’s enormous,” Burcham said, who reached out to McGeary about three months ago via Twitter. “My goal is to turn that from a conversation into something real.”

Burcham is looking to overflow the new 22,000 square foot, multi million dollar entrepreneur center with as much programming and resources as possible. The Hattery program would add another great avenue for Tennessee startups to take advantage of. Although still under wraps,we do know that there are other nationally known accelerator brands looking to partner with the new entrepreneur center when it opens in June.

If anyone can sell Nashville’s startup and entrepreneurial community it’s Burcham. He’s a salesmans salesman and with his vast experience in the startup space, coupled with his down home Nashville personality, it’s hard to not fall in love with the guy and his passion.

The team behind the Hattery is filled with Silicon Valley success stories and they’re looking to spread the wealth across the country. Their portfolio includes; Bright Funds, Cloud Physics, Zubhium, and Hipiti.

Find out more about Hattery here and the Nashville Entrepreneur Center here.

Take a tour of the new multi-million dollar 22,000 square foot Entrepreneur Center here.

Never Miss Your Kids Game With RUA Sports, And Raise Money For Their School Too!

One thing that sucks about being on the “sneaker strapped startup road trip” is missing time with my kid. FaceTime makes it almost bearable, and home time is just that, home time. Now my daughter is going to start officially playing soccer in the fall and while I am going to try and schedule our road trip stops around the soccer schedule, inevitably I’m going to miss a few games.

Aaron Russell the founder of Jacksonville startup RUA Sport feels my pain, along with the pain of thousands of other parents who’s schedules dictate that they can’t be there for all the goals, home runs and triple doubles. Russell’s startup is also great for grandma’s and grandpa’s all over the country that want to keep up with their grandkids games.

RUA Sports is the creator of MyMobile Scoreboard. In essence this app crowdsources a network of users on-site at a youth sports event in a “play by play” style manner. You’ll never miss a goal, save or a triple play again.

Russell and the team at RUA Sports have also figured out a way to do some non-traditional fundraising for the schools that utilize the app and the social crowdsourcing play by play that it offers.

MyMobile Scoreboard costs $1.99 to download and RUA Sports will give back 50 cents of every download to the schools or youth sports organizations that download the app. Each organization will have it’s own mobile scoreboard so for example a high school could have a mobile scoreboard for their basketball program. Then the parents and others who want to keep up with the game can download the app and give back $.50 per download back to the school. For some schools with heritage and history this could prove to be a really good fundraiser.

Check out our interview video below with RUA Sports and for more info visit ruasports.com

Here are more awesome startups from OneSpark the World’s Crowdfunding Festival in Jacksonville.

After Multiple Startup Competition Wins, Charlotte’s WeRx Launches

Over the summer, when nibletz.com was in Charlotte for the Democratic National Convention, as part of our sneaker-strapped startup road trip, we got a chance to interview Amir Khoshnevis the founder of WeRx.org.

WeRx.org had just won the Startup Rockon pitch contest as part of the Startup America DNC festivities.

WeRx.org is an innovative crowdsourcing platform that would definitely be considered in the social entrepreneurship space. Khoshnevis and his co-founders discovered that people are paying way too much for their medication. Of course we’ve known this for years but what the WeRx team found was something that will blow most people’s minds away.

Take Lipitor for example. In it’s generic form the WeRx team found some pharmacies sold the drug for $11 and on the high end, $180 and that’s right in the Charlotte metro area. The unfortunate reality is that most people who require medication may do a limited cost comparison, and if they do they check the few pharmacies close by. If they can’t afford the cost of the medication close by they often decide to not take it. This can ultimately lead to death.

As another example Khoshnevis and the WeRx team found that in West Charlotte diabetes medications cost two to three times as much as they do in the Ballentine suburb of Charlotte. Why? Because the demographics skew more diabetic in West Charlotte.

Prior to their launch today, WeRX also won the Distilled Intelligence startup competition as well as the Reboot America competition in Washington DC. Now all of their hard work is set to pay off as they’ve launched the platform to the world.

The official launch is a huge step toward connecting consumers to the prescription price information and savings they need,” Khoshnevis said. “We started this company after being doctors in the trenches for many years and watching patients suffer simply because they can’t afford their medications. This is one of the last industries where consumers have not had easy access to price comparison tools and we have changed that today.”

Kosnevis continued, “We have a lot of positive momentum and have been extremely pleased with the recognition but we are keeping our focus on solving the problem. 100 million Americans lack prescription coverage or are underinsured and are at risk of not being able to afford their medications. Our goal is to leverage the power of consumer choice to create a more fair, open and transparent system for prescription meds. We sincerely believe that by empowering consumers and doctors with pricing information, we can allow patients to stay on their medications and remain healthy.”

What the heck is a sneaker-strapped road trip?

Indianapolis Startup MileTrack GPS Makes Tracking Miles & Reimbursement A Breeze

Indianapolis based serial entrepreneur Andrew Westberg has shifted focus back to his hardware startup called MileTrack GPS. This GPS device combines wireless communications with GPS coordinates for the express reason of tracking your mileage.

The device, that plugs into your cars cigarette outlet adapter, is perfect for recording mileage and then getting reimbursed for it. It’s also perfect for companies that need to track the whereabouts of their field employees without systems that cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Now of course with smartphones and the latest stand alone GPS devices there are several ways of tracking mileage, but none are as easy or plug and play as MileTrack GPS. The compact device plugs into the car and then shakes hands with a wireless network. It’s doing this for almanac data, to get a better fixed GPS signal and then to dump data back to the cloud-based MileTrack GPS website.

Westberg’s demo video below, shows exactly how the device operates. You may notice in watching the video though, that it can be as easy as just putting in the car and letting it run. The device and website are doing all the work for you.

At the end of the month (or day, however you calculate your mileage) you can see all of the trips you’ve taken. You can label the trips you take most frequently and then you can notate next to the trip whether it was business or personal. The settings tab allows the user to input the reimbursement rates for business mileage and it has the ability to input different mileage for different businesses.

This is ideal for freelancers who bill clients by the mile at different rates. You can easily notate personal trips as well and take them out of the reimbursement calculations.

After all of the data parameters are set, the system just about runs itself. After the user has reconciled their mileage it gives an overall calculation for reimbursement that can then be printed off, along with a record of the miles actually driven. You can even go back in the MileTrack system and see where you went, what streets you were on and what places you stopped.

You can find out more about MileTrackGPS here

Or support them on Kickstarter here.

Florida Startup Stocktagon Another Great Research Tool For Your Portfolio’s Arsenal [video]

We got a chance to talk with Paul Irwin the founder of Florida based startup Stocktagon.

Stocktagon is a research tool that combs press releases, earnings call notes and other media and press information to help the user find relevant information about stocks. For instance, with the recent fertilizer crisis in Texas, you could use Stocktagon to research the word fertilizer and it would show you what publicly traded companies were mentioned in stories about fertilizer. It would also show you the context for which those stories mentioned your search terms.

While in beta now, Irwin hopes to offer Stocktagon to individuals, big brokerage houses and everything in between. Information has always been a powerful tool when stock and commodity trading, and tools like Stocktagon make it even easier to find that information.

Stocktagon was in the first batch of companies to go through The Factory accelerator in St. Augustine. The Factory was started by Vaughn’s software development company Feature[23] which gives them a unique position as they leverage the development side of Feature[23] to help build the accelerating startups.

With a 10 year background in finance, including a stint at Deutsche Bank, Vaughn is particularly bullish on Stocktagon. “I can’t wait to show it off to my friends in fiance” Vaughn said when we spoke with him at OneSpark. Vaughn plans on leveraging personal relationships in the finance community along with some of his connections to get Irwin and his team in front of the biggest financial companies in the world.

“Big companies can be leery of startups like Stocktagon and ProfileGorilla” Vaughn said. That’s typically because a large company would have to change the way they use another form of technology to incorporate a new startup. Many big companies are hesitant to do that because some fear that startups will run out of money, and won’t be able to pay development costs. With The Factory the development portion is already built in.

Stocktagon was one of seven startups housed at The Dalton Agency during OneSpark. We’ve already interviewed cohort mates RestroomAlert and ProfileGorilla.

Check out our video interview with Stocktagon below and for more info visit stocktagon.com

Here’s more startup coverage from OneSpark the world’s crowdfunding festival.