500 Startups And More Back Philippines Startup Payroll Hero

500 Startups, LX Ventures, the Futura Corporation, 8capita Partners, Ryan Holmes (founder of Hootsuite), Dan Martell (CEO of Clarity), Benjamin Joffee and other angels have all backed Philippines/Canadian startup Payroll Hero to the tune of $1 million.

Payroll Hero was dubbed the IT Startup Of The Year in the Philippines for their back end HR platform that provides payroll, attendance and scheduling services for companies both large and small. Tech In Asia says that the company is software that makes sure “people actually work”.

The company currently has customers in the USA, Philippines, Canada, Cambodia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and India. They plan on using part of this investment to expand across South East Asia.

Payroll Hero was one of 16 international startups to participate in Startup Arena, a pitch contest held over the summer. Ben Joffee, who is sometimes referred to as “Mr. Asia” was one of the judges at that contest and then put his money where his mouth is by investing in this round.

More available at the source.

Mississippi Startup Muddy Water: Next Stop Shark Tank

Muddy Water Camo, Mississippi startup,Shark Tank

Steve Maloney co-founder of Muddy Water Camo (photo: muddywatercamo.com)

Long time readers of nibletz.com know that we’re big fans of Shark Tank on ABC. Naturally as entrepreneurs, Shark Tank is a must watch show (you can see our Shark Tank coverage here). We’ve even reported on when an entrepreneur on Shark Tank has their deal reneged on after the show airs.

The show puts entrepreneurs from across the country up against some of the most brilliant investor minds there are. Mark Cuban, Damon John, Kevin O’Leary, Barbara Corcoran, Lori Greiner, and Robert Herjavec. All of them are multi-millionaires, and Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks is actually a billionaire.

In the four seasons the show has been on the air we’ve seen a wide variety of startups pitched in the Shark Tank. Ideas ranging from homemade peanut butter to VIP club service have all been pitched in the tank.

Friday night, February 22, Madison Mississippi startup “Muddy Water Camo” will get their chance to pitch the sharks. The company’s founders Steve Maloney and Stephen Kirkpatrick were selected out of over 30,000 entries to pitch. The show is currently averaging 6.8 million viewers per episode.

The company designs and manufacturers camo products ranging from caps, hats, masks, waders, and gear bags, in what onlinemadison.com called “the most realistic camo pattern ever created”

Maloney told onlinemadison.com that they created the line because most camo is designed for deer hunters, not duck hunters.

“I realized that every available camouflage pattern seem designed for hunting deer in the woods,” Maloney says. “None of those patterns looked like the marshes and flooded fields where I was hunting ducks. And it seemed to me that if you’re hunting a bird with webbed feet, your camo really ought to feature water.”

Where the innovation really comes in is how Maloney and Kirkpatrick have created and designed their camo. Their designs are based on photographs and not computer drawings. This allows their camo to be manufactured for any kind of terrain for any kind of game.

“We can make realistic camo for the mountains, the prairies, the forests – any kind of terrain, for any kind of game.” Kirkpatrick said.

Although the founders already know the outcome of their appearance they are sworn by secrecy not to reveal it until after their episode airs.

We’re curious to see how they do, as hunting and camo don’t seem to be in any particular sharks wheelhouse. Lori Greiner, who rotates her chair with Barbara Corcoran, has had lots of success marketing products on QVC, so if Greiner one of the sharks for Muddy Waters’ episode, they may be in luck. Otherwise it’s going to be a hard fight.

Find out more and see how realistic their designs really are at muddywatercamo.com

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.

Startup Arkansas Launching Friday March 1st With Scott Case & Brad Feld

Tis the season to launch Startup America Partnership regions. Monday we were in Atlanta for the kickoff of Startup Georgia with Scott Case and So So Def CEO & Founder Jermaine Dupri. Now Case along with Startup Community activist, investor and author Brad Feld are preparing for Startup Arkansas’ big launch on March 1st.

While Startup Bus regions across the country are double checking their busses, and checking their manifests, entrepreneurs throughout Arkansas will come together in Conway for an event called “Think Big Arkansas”.

The event kicks off bright and early at 9:00am with check-in starting at 8:30am. It’s being held at the Hendrix College Student Life & Technology Center.

Think Big Arkansas has a whole day of programming lined up including a startup alley exhibition area, a parade of startup ecosystem startups and partners, several sessions and of course Scott Case and Brad Feld. Case will be speaking at noon during lunch (bring $$ for Food Trucks and guided by Truckily) and Feld will be speaking at 6:30. He’ll also be signing copies of his book “Startup Communities”.

15 startups will be featured during the event in a startup alley, and demoing throughout. Kenny Tomlin from Rockfish and John James from Acumen will be speaking on starting up and the importance of serial entrepreneurship.

It’s not too late to register for this great event, click here.

iGrabber Is The Kayak For Car Shopping

iGrabber, Virginia starutp, dc startup, everywhereelse.co

iGrabber team shows off at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference (photo: Allie Fox, for NMI)

When it’s time to shop for a new car there are hundreds of websites to go to and a handful of sites that everyone trusts. When it gets down to comparison shopping though, your web browser, or multiple browsers can turn into a huge, unorganized mess. If there was a simpler way to comparison shop for cars, similar to the way you can shop for travel through Kayak.com, it would make the hassle of finding the next automobile much easier.

That’s the idea behind Northern Virginia based iGrabber. Founded by Khurrum Shakir, Abdul-Malik Ahmad, Deepak Pillai and Ronald Fraser, this talented group of tech savy car aficianados, knew there was a better way. In fact, Shakir, told nibletz.com earlier this year that he was surprised no one had tried to do a search engine, comparison platform like this before.

“iGrabber.com takes the frustration out of searching multiple sites for your next car, truck or SUV. We’re the only True Vehicle Search Engine on the web. Taking the Google and Kayak approach we’ve made the process of searching for your next vehicle much easier. Unlike a lot of the Auto sites on the web that only show vehicle listings from within their database we will show you everyone’s vehicle listings in one site.” Shakir said.

iGrabber is built around the fact there are currently 7.7 million duplicate unique visitors every month searching for a vehicle of choice. These numbers account for repetition across up to 6 different sites. With iGrabber one site grabs all of the possible car choices and then lets you compare them the way you would compare cameras on bestbuy.com or travel on kayak.com “We have what some have coined as the Kayak of vehicle search.” Shakir told us.

Building iGrabber hasn’t been easy. To date the startup hasn’t raised any venture capital, bootstrapping it through launch. Shakir added, “We have been completely self-funded, mainly working out of a small home office and jumping from local coffee shops to local pizza restaurants within the Northern Virginia area holding our team meetings. ”

If iGrabber can get the word out to the over 7 million people searching multiple sites to comparison shop for cars, this could be a lucrative business. What do you think?

Visit iGrabber online here.

iGrabber was one of nearly 100 exhibitors at everywhereelse.co 2013, don’t miss next years conference at this years rates, more here

Memphis’ ZeroTo510 Accelerator Opens Applications For 2013

Restore Medical Solutions, Urova, Bioworks, ZeroTo510,Seed Hatchery, Allan Daisley

Shawn Flynn, co-founder of Restore Medical Solutions, pitches at ZeroTo510 investor day, a pitch that led to $2.5 Million dollars in follow on funding (photo: NMI)

Last year, the inaugural Zeroto510 medical device accelerator was met with phenomenal success. Five out of the six participating teams received follow on funding. Four of the teams received $100,000 dollars. The fifth team, Restore Medical Solutions, went straight to raising a Series A round at $2.5 million.

With results like those, medical device startups across the country are feverishly preparing to submit their applications for the next cohort. One of the secrets to the success of the Zeroto510 program is that it is a joint venture between Launch Your City’s Seed Hatchery accelerator and Memphis Bioworks. Bioworks supplies the lab space, and the deep rooted scientific and engineering mentorship. Launch Your City comes in with the curriculum to prepare the startups for pitching and success on the business side of the world.

When compared to other medical based accelerator and incubation programs, Zeroto510, through their unique partnership, is able to get their startup founders to communicate and pitch at a level understandable to the traditional investor, media and public. In a medically based program, founders and entrepreneurs with scientific and engineering backgrounds tend to get the science, and not necessarily the business.

Bioworks is able to offer a bridge from the surrounding medical community including St. Jude’s, Methodist, Vanderbilt University, the University of Memphis and other high ranking leaders in science and medicine, to offer hands on mentorship to refine these great ideas.

Zeroto510 gets it’s name from the FDA’s 510(k) pre-market notification filing. In laymen’s terms this filing allows medical device companies, with similar technology to something that has gone through FDA approval, to fast track a process which can sometimes take 3-5 years.

Six companies will be selected for the 2013 program. Each company will receive $50,000 in initial seed capital and be part of an intensive, mentorship driven 12 week program of instruction and hands on activities to guide the entrepreneurs through the process.

One of the other factors that makes Zeroto510 successful is the cohort size. By having a smaller group, the same size as the tech accelerator Seed Hatchery, the teams get to know each other better and collaborate more meaningfully. Last years program only featured one Memphis based startup. The other five startups relocated to Memphis for the program and are still, growing their companies in Memphis.

“We received applications from across the United States, carefully selected our six
participants and were very pleased with the quality of their ideas, the spirit of comradery that developed, the levels of learning, and, in the end, with the final presentations that resulted in additional funding. We expect even higher quality in 2013.” said Allan Daisley, director of entrepreneurship and sustainability for Memphis Bioworks.

If you’ve got a medical device startup head over to apply here at zeroto510.com

London Startup Wants To Know What Float’s Your Goat

File this under: startups with kick ass names. What’s more is that London based startup Float Your Goat has already attracted over 350 freelancers to their network that connects freelancers to their powerful social network.

Float Your Goat is a social workplace where creative people can network, build teams, grow ideas, and earn money. To date there are 367 freelancers in the network and some of them have been rates as part of the top 100 designers in the UK by The Drum.

The site connects graphic artists, illustrators, photographers, web designers, copywriters, animators and more, not just to each other, but to businesses and other colleagues that have projects that need a designer now.

Float Your Goat was founded by Emeline Wraith who appropriately took the title of “Chief Goat Herder”. The idea for Float Your Goat came up in 2010 as part of “Dragon’s Den” (American’s think Shark Tank) style competition called Dream Big.

“The dream was to create and promote fair, honest and open relationships between clients and freelancers, encouraging the idea of remote working and offering a social media platform for freelancers to share their ideas, tips and tricks as well as showcase their work.” Wraith told nibletz.com in an interview. “We are keen advocates of the idea of remote working; internet access, a laptop and a creative mind is all you need to freelance, and this is something we wanted to promote. Equally, we wanted to be able to cut out the middle man and offer affordable and fair services for all parties involved!”

With a variety of free lancers at different levels and rates, Float Your Goat is perfect for small businesses, large businesses, individuals, and of course startups. Since it’s 2013 and everyone is using the internet anyway, it’s very easy for a startup in Boise Idaho to connect with a designer on Float Your Goat. In fact that startup plans on growing without geographic borders.

Float Your Goat is just as effective for recruiters and those with projects as it is for freelancers.

“For recruiters, With the site’s search engine and rating system in place, clients can easily browse freelancers’ portfolios, testimonials and references, and so find the right person with the right skills to fulfil their needs. Perfect for any ad hoc work!” Wraith said. She’s also hoping that Float Your Goat will become agency executives’ “little black book”.

Now with a solid community growing Float Your Goat is launching a campaign geared towards startups.

“Float Your Goat have just founded a new campaign called Startups 4 Startups (SUSU), a meaningful network of creative startups that, together, delivers selective areas of expertise to nurture, collaborate and develop new business propositions into a working reality. We want to demonstrate the development of a startup from inception to launch, taking a fledgling company and making it fly.

Startups 4 Startups (SUSU) consists of five partners which, when combined, provide a 360 degree service and the necessary elements to help a new business succeed, from business development and financial management to design, print, PR and online presence. Float Your Goat, Incisive London, EML Wildfire, Print My Pixel and People Of Print each offering a different angle and a different skill set to be used both within and outside the creative community. Together we provide the knowledge and ability required for business to business propositions and supply the creative services needed for success.

Each of the partners is either a start up themselves or a collaborator with startups. Through Startups 4 Startups, each will give an understanding of how the startup process works as well as offer sound advice and best practice in terms of the startup journey.”

We will be reporting on this as it launches next month.

You can find out more about Float Your Goat here

Reno Startup ShortStack Does The Grunt Work So You Can Make Apps Sexy

Everyone needs an app these days. Whether it’s a web app, Facebook app or Mobile App, without an app your company seems behind in the times. People love showing off features and making their apps and presence look sexy, but before you can get to that, someone needs to do the grunt work. That’s where Reno startup ShortStack comes in.

ShortStack was created by Jim Belosic and Doug Churchill while Belosic was running a successful web design company. ShortStack was actually a toolset his own in house people developed to make some of the backend grunt work on design quicker. The pair quickly realized they were onto something and rather than just using ShortStack in house, they could offer it as a DIY software as a service, and make some money while helping business owners.

The response they got when the first rolled the product out was more than they ever expected. They amassed 80,000 users in year one and added another 100,000 users the following year. Now ShortStack alone is a multi million dollar business.

ShortStack allows business owners to create all kinds of different apps on a variety of platforms including the web, Facebook and mobile. It’s being used to create contests, sweepstakes, newsletter signups and integrations with Instagram YouTube and Twitter.

Belosic isn’t a flyby night developer either. He gets design and social media and contributes regularly to Mashable, Social Media Examiner, CMS Wire, PR Daily, and Smart Brief. He was also named the Technology Entrepreneur of the Year by the Nevada Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology. That’s not such an easy feat with Las Vegas’ thriving tech scene just miles down the road.

Making the move from in house agency tool to SaaS wasn’t easy. ” It was a challenge because we needed to continue to do both businesses at the same time. ShortStack was bootstrapped so we needed revenue from the agency to support the new endeavor. The biggest challenge was figuring out how to double the workload with essentially half the revenue. It was a huge balancing act, but luckily we had the luxury of a product that was making money from the beginning. Without that early revenue, we would have had to look for investors. ” Belosic told nibletz.com in an interview.

After several years at the helm of a profitable web design business, taking the plunge into the startup world wasn’t an easy task either. Reno’s startup scene isn’t nearly what it is in neighboring Las Vegas.

“The startup culture in Reno is pretty non-existent and haphazardly organized. People get good ideas, get really excited, and recruit other people to work with them … and then they just burn out. Or businesses do really well and are too busy to contribute to the startup culture. There’s not a lot of steady startup activity here and there’s not enough support for regular continued efforts.” Belosic said.

But raising a startup in Reno has it’s benefits as well. “The cost of doing business is a huge advantage. Nevada has no state income tax and the business tax climate is extremely beneficial. Business licenses are inexpensive and the cost of talent is inexpensive. Rent is also insanely cheap. When it comes to my monthly expenses, rent comes in at number 18 on my expenses list. The quality of life is also an advantage for my employees. Housing is inexpensive and there’s no traffic. Reno is also close to awesome outdoor activities like skiing, hiking, fishing, Lake Tahoe, San Francisco, hunting, etc., so it’s a desirable place to live and raise a family.”

Bootstrapping it to revenue probably explains why Belosic is such a fan of Atlanta startup Mail Chimp’s founder Ben Chestnut.

“I have a big man-crush on Ben Chestnut from MailChimp. I read his blog regularly and feel like we are in a very similar industry. We’ve been through a lot of the same stuff when it comes to our previous experiences. I was reading about their company history and realized that they too began as an agency. The MailChimp platform was created as an internal tool at first, but was later released to the public. I feel like every time I have a question, I can read Ben’s blog and he’s either had that same problem or offers some insight that is relevant to me.”

ShortStack now includes more than 40 tools and 70 templates, you can check it out for yourself at shortstack.com You can keep up with Belosic and Shortstack on Facebook

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.

Milwaukee Startup Creates A Stock Photography Market For The Social Photog

Technology has made it so that every person with a cell phone is now a “photographer”. Of course there’s also those those tens of thousands of wanna be photographers who flock to Best Buy to get the latest DSLR from Nikon or Canon and never use more than “automatic mode”. While the people who actually know what they’re doing have sites like photorankr that serve as market places for those photos, what about grandma Lilly’s photos of the tomato garden?

Rest assured that if you’re taking tomato garden photos or pictures of your best friend doing jello shots, there is a market place for those “social photographers”. That place, is VZIBL.

The Milwaukee startup’s founder Alexander Marasco, picked the name VZIBL as a sort of slang for “visible”. “The idea of the company was to bring self awareness to your photographic content or become visible. VZIBL is just the ‘visual you for sale’.” he told us in an interview.

While sites like iStock are popular with folks sourcing photos from professional, semi-pro and even amateur photographers, VZIBL is the place for “social stock”. “photographic content created by socially engaged photographers focusing on new digital tools and social networking technology. Instagram, GoPro, iPhoneography, Nikon D90…whatever your camera vice!” Marasco said.

Once a social photographer sets up an account and starts sharing photos using VZIBL it’s up to him or her on whether or not they want to make money with their pictures. A photographers “social stock” can be accessible either royalty free, rights managed or exclusive rights, depending on both the photographer and the content.

Marasco is quick to point out what VZIBL gets out of the deal. Using the VZIBL app automatically assumes a 70/30 split in a sliding licensing agreement between the photographer and the platform. Naturally if you’re going royalty free there’s no split but a 30% revenue share isn’t too far off the industry norm.

VIZIBL has gone through a pivot or two along the way. At first Marasco wanted to do create a photo thread app where people could communicate through photographs. What he found in talking to people about that idea, was that no market place really existed for this layer of photographers that’s cropped up. There are probably more photographers in the “social photographer” category than any other.

While Marasco is getting ready to move east to Brooklyn New York, VZIBL was created in Milwaukee which like it’s counterpart Madison, has a bit of a startup scene starting to form.

“Milwaukee is definitely creating some great ‘Hackers’ and with new incubators and Think Tanks now available, it seems to be consolidating minds and is launching some really interesting concepts to market.” Marasco told us about his city known for it’s beer.

The secret sauce in VIZIBL is creating photo-celebs according to Marasco ” Publishing content has never been so easy…why not possess the ability to create future earnings from your original photography. We like to see ourselves as a visual ringtone. We want to make Photo-Celebs out of our users!”

Find out more about VIZIBL by following them on Twitter!

Pittsburgh’s Startup Hustlers Move Into The Hustle Den

Pittsburgh just opened up a new incubator space which will house fifteen to twenty early stage startup teams across a variety of industries. With the grit and grind that comes with building a technology startup in a blue collar town, it’s appropriately called the “Hustler Den”.

With the first class of teams set to move into the space, it’s good to know that they’ve secured an anonymous donor who’s provided the incubator with enough funds to run for three years.

The fifteen to twenty startups will have free desk space, access to conference rooms, break out rooms, a ping pong table, original Nintendo and other recreational and community benefits. They are also hoping that the teams will leverage each other’s networks along with the mentors committed to helping those hustlers.

This local Pittsburgh blog reported that over 200 people showed up for the grand opening of the Hustler Den including Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravensthal (who was also spotted at the DNC startup celebration in Charlotte this past summer with Startup RockOn). Ravensthal leads a new wave of municipal leaders that realize the days of big corporations moving into towns to create jobs are over and cities need to embrace the future employers of America.

Meet the first 14 startups taking up residence in the Hustler Den (from their website)

Allegheny Organics is committed to providing an easy and seamless organic waste recycling service to the residents, businesses, restaurants and community events of Allegheny County. Through our efforts, we aim to promote healthy eating, responsible farming, waste minimization, and local economic sustainability, which will play an integral role in reinvigorating our region and building a strong, cohesive community.

Hajj Media / Virtual Lobbies designs and tailors mobile and web solutions, to decrease the inefficiencies in appointment scheduling and line management, with a dynamic platform that not only increases the transparency of wait times, but allows people to interact remotely. The debut product of Virtual Lobbies is the “Q”, a generally applicable mobile-web application for appointment scheduling and line management for a number of markets: barbershops & beauty salons, administrative offices, mechanic shops, massage parlors,colleges & universities, valet parking, etc.

Open Curriculum is a non-profit organization based in Pittsburgh, PA with a vision to provide access to high-quality K-12 learning material to children around the world. We are involved in developing a platform that allows communities to access, create and share K-12 curriculum material, and in due course, become a ubiquitous Wikipedia-like hub for K-12 learning material.

Orro believes in aiding your team’s funding efforts, while building a sustainable earth in the process. Orro is a free and easy eco-friendly movement, where we collect and examine old electronics to ensure the most resourceful way of reusing, reducing or recycling each individual item. Orro does not require any paperwork, so get on your feet, and help your team grow with the environment today!

Private Lender Nexus helps solve the problems that many commercial real estate professionals have when looking for private money to fund their own or their clients commercial real estate needs. To find the right private lender can be time consuming and fraught with unethical lenders and brokers with upfront fees. Private Lender Nexus will be an online database of screened private commercial real estate lenders. Commercial real estate professionals will be able go to our website and enter their private financing needs and be matched with verified and ethical private lenders with no upfront fees throughout the continental United States.

Aura is a bicycle safety lighting system which illuminates the wheels of the bicycle and dynamically responds to the rider and environment.

Salad Specialty/ Team Salad is developing a specialty salad restaurant concept for the East Liberty area, focused on providing access to health-conscious and nutritious meal options in the region. We are designing a new dining experience with a creative food presentation style–inspiring everyone in the ‘Burgh to start thinking “out of the box” when it comes to eating more veggies!

Scholar Hero wants to create a web-based, tablet, and mobile app that will get scholars and students to share works-in-progress in a fun and collaborative manner. We hope to establish the most trusted and engaged place for academia online.

Source is a restaurant and educational facility that aims to inform, inspire, and invigorate customers in every stage of the sustainable growing process, from seed to plate, in a unique dining atmosphere that embraces guests as an integral part of the food production and preparation process. Source will be a beacon for health-conscious eco-consumers who wish to exercise mindfulness in their selection of food products, even while dining out, and who are interested in learning more about sustainable food systems.

Kennedy Blue Communications provides strategic communications plans to leverage clients access and impact with consumers and media markets. Services provided include: press placement, writing and editing services, consulting, web development, video and animation production, marketing and branding.

Haitian Families First (HFF) is a non-profit organization, founded by Pittsburgh sisters Jamie and Ali McMutrie that provides support by strengthening communities through nurturing families. Our long-standing presence in the community, holistic approach, and three distinct programs allow us to work with families to assess their individual needs to help them achieve their goals of family preservation and self-sufficiency. Haitian Families First preserves and sustains families by helping them to find employment, supply their loved ones’ most basic needs, and provide for their children’s educations and care.

NAVISection is a project to enhance driver licensing decisions with intelligent vehicles. Our mission is to link technologies advancing driver evaluation, training, and safety for people seeking to obtain or retain a driver’s license.

Student InTuition, a for-profit social enterprise, offers a web-based platform designed for college students who want to reduce their debt and develop better career opportunities. Student InTuition monetizes in-class work products in the form of direct tuition payments for students in exchange for high-quality work products and meaningful recruiting opportunities for sponsoring organizations.

Sponsortize is an ad platform that allows local businesses to support local bloggers and advertise to local communities.

Body Boss Is A Fitness Startup For Teams VIDEO INTERVIEW

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Body Boss co-founder Daryl Lu explains his startup at Startup Rally (photo: NMI 2013)

There are a lot of fitness startups out there. At CES 2013 back in January, a panel of media big wigs actually talked about the fact that there may be too many fitness startups these days. There’s a lot of noise in the fitness space and you’ll have to be unique to succeed.

Atlanta startup Body Boss may actually have that uniqueness people are looking for. Body Boss isn’t just a fitness app, but it’s a fitness app for teams. High School, college and even professional sports teams can use the Body Boss platform to track the fitness performance of their players.

Coaches can use Body Boss to track workouts from individuals as well as the entire team. The platform gives coaches the analytics they need to compare each player, how fit they are and where they need improvement.

Body Boss is making it easier for college recruiters to get a better picture of the high school athletes they’re looking at.

“This is a great tool for tracking and recruiting high school athletes. I like the competitive aspect, accessibility on smartphones and tablets and instant updates. There is nothing on the market that is this professional looking” John Sisk, Director of Football Player Development at Georgia Tech said about Body Boss.

The competitive aspect that Sisk mentions is a feature in Body Boss that allows intra-squad competition. Virtual weight room crap-talking can be done through Body Boss, and whether athletes want to admit it or not, that can be a powerful tool.

Real time updates and an easy to understand UI make it a great way to create accountability for players and coaches. It also eliminates paperwork coaches would have to do on athlete’s workouts.

As the platform grows, Body Boss co-founders Daryl Lu and Don Pottinger hope that teams will be able to use Body Boss to not only keep up with their own team but other teams as well. A network for collaborating and sharing is already baked into the platform.

Check out the video below:

For more info on Body Boss visit bodybossfitness.com

Atlanta Startup Plisten Is Bringing Pinboards For Brands VIDEO INTERVIEW

While we will stay away from calling Plisten, Pinterest for Brands, that may be a very good description of exactly what Randy Mitchell and Eric Yu are doing with their Atlanta based startup.

Mitchell tells us in this video interview that Plisten came about after he had some trouble with major brands. He gives us just one example, citing a problem he had with a major bank where he had been a customer for years. As his situation got escalated he became more and more frustrated with customer service and the way the bank was treating him. Finally, a customer service “manager” told him to get any further he would need to write a letter to the CEO. Plisten is that letter.

But, Plisten is more about good interactions with brands as opposed to bad ones. Facebook, Google+ and even Twitter have taught us that people will communicate about their favorite brands. People will tweet about great experiences and of course bad experiences with any brand from Best Buy to BMW.

Coca-Cola, MTV, Disney, Red Bull, Converse, Starbucks and McDonalds are just some of the top brands on Facbeook today. Those seven brands alone count for over 250 million likes.

Brands are definitely a big play, Yu and Mitchell are hoping to hit a homerun with Plisten, which is a pinboard specifically for brands.

Consumers will be able to talk about their favorite brands, like their favorite brands and communicate directly with those brands. This is a powerful tool for consumers and for the brands themselves. By cutting away the noise from everything else people like, and honing in just on brands, Plisten will be able to deliver captive audiences and in turn those brands will be able to market directly to their most active customers.

Of course in Mitchell’s case, when someone has a problem with a brand they’ll also be able to communicate that problem. Perhaps they’ll find that the problem is more widespread. They may also find it’s isolated, but either way, with the focus strictly on brands, brand managers will have a better way of finding those problems, and fixing them.

Check out our video interview below.

You can find out more at plisten.com