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Everywhereelse.co Getting Close, Less Than 8 Weeks Til The Biggest Startup Conference In The U.S.

The biggest startup conference in the United States, everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, is happening in less than eight weeks. February 9-12th 2013, over 1700 entrepreneurs, startup founders, investors, designers, and developers will converge on downtown Memphis Tennessee. Make no mistake about it, this is a national conference with less than 15% of the ticket sales zipcoding to Tennessee.

Over 400 of the tickets sold have identified themselves as angels or VC’s and their email addresses check out.

The conference officially starts on Sunday February 10th with a preview of the Startup Village. Over 100 startups from around the world will be exhibiting in the Startup Village. Startup Village exhibitors have three changes to win part of $50,000 in cash (and then prizes) in three different contests. The first contest will be a video contest that will launch on January 15th and is open to all of the startups in the village. The second contest will be a hard 2 minute speed pitch contest in front of an audience of investors Sunday afternoon. The third contest is an audience choice contest which will allow the over 1700 attendees who’ve purchased tickets to the event to vote for the startup they like the best.

We have the strongest speaker line up of any conference this size. Scott Case, founding CTO at Priceline.com, Several TechStars founders, Mike Bott GM at The Brandery, Gabe Lozano from Lockerdome, Sarah Ware, Award Winning Author Tracy Myers, and many more that we can announce when ticket sales close.

everywhereelse.co The Starutp Conference will give startups, entrepreneurs and founders unparalleled access to some of the best investors in the world and networking opportunities not available from any other conference. We’ve been able to do this because of our great sponsors and keeping ticket prices low. (Regular price $99 attendee $550 startup/early bird pricing $59 attendee $425 startup which includes 3 tickets)

We can’t wait to see you in Memphis!

Linkage:

everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference website

Get your Startup Village booth or attendee ticket here

Barcelona Startup: Groupiest, Create Your Own Social Networks

When you scale down social networks to their core, you’ll quickly realize that they’ve been around a lot longer than Facebook. MMC groups on AOL, bulletin boards on Prodigy and even dial in BBS’ back in the 80’s would equate to what has evolved into the current social network. Albeit today’s social networks have many more features, users and points of entry.

While Facebook continues to grow, and currently tops over 1 billion users, siloed or vertical social networks are starting to pop up all over the place. You have your one big public network and than you have your “clubs”. So what if there is no network for your interest yet? You could opt to be entrepreneurial and create a startup for it, with a practical likeliness of failing. Or you can find a startup that lets you create your own mini social networks.

That platform is Barcelona startup Groupiest.

Groupiest allows users to create their own community of interest for free (read mini-social network). Using Groupiest users can share what their passionate about and build their own personal brand in their own network of like minded folks. Think Yahoo Groups or even Usenet on steroids.

We got a chance to talk with the founders of Groupiest. Check out the interview below:

Partnership With St. Louis Rams, Paying Off For Startup, Bonfyre

St. Louis startup Bonfyre is socially engaging and powering events in ways that other social event sharing apps just haven’t been able to perfect. When you think about an actual bonfire, you know the big huge ones, everyone at the bonfire may take away something different from that event. If you’ve ever been to enormous bonfires like the ones at Bonaroo in years past, hundreds and hundreds of people could be at the same event and share totally different experiences.

The same thing goes for any large event. Football games make a great case use for the Bonfyre application. Here you have tens of thousands of fans that are watching the same game, with different favorite players, different favorite teams, and in different places throughout the stadium. In this day and age all of those people are sharing to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social networks. Everyone has a different perspective and different shares. Bonfyre is bringing that all back together.

The St. Louis, venture backed startup was founded by Raymond Gobberg and Mark Sawyier. They’ve received $750,000 in venture capital from Arch Angels and Cultivation Capital. It’s another St. Louis startup that Rick Holton is all fyred up about.

Bonfyre was fortunate enough to get into a partnership with the St. Louis Rams early on. Now Bonfyre and the Rams have been through their third sponsored game. The St. Louis Business Journal, is reporting that during the game between the St. Louis Rams and the Minnesota Vikings, fans used Bonfyre over 17,000 times. 20 percent of those participants shared 1800 chats and photos.

The Rams are taking advantage of Bonfyre’s social network and outreach and they’ve baked ticket giveaways and behind the scenes photos and chats with players into the game experience via Bonfyre.

“The app allows us to further connect with our fans to help increase the value of their experience before, during and after a game,” Brian Killingsworth Rams Vice President of Marketing & Branding for the Rams told the Business Journal.

Linkage:

Check out Bonfyre here

Here’s more startup news from “everywhere else”

everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference is the largest startup conference in the U.S.

Atlanta Startup: CloudSherpas Announces $40 Million Dollar Raise

CloudSherpas, an Atlanta based startup has announced a VC raise of $40 million dollars as well as an acquisition of CloudTrigger, a consulting company that specializes in Salesforce.

TechCrunch describes CloudSherpas as a “cloud brokerage”. The company is a reseller of Google Apps and services as well as Salesforce products. They also consult on everything cloud.

But their own intellectual property also puts them in a category by themselves. CloudSherpas has a treasure trove of their own proprietary extensions as well as those stemming from their acquisitions.

TechCrunch is quick to point out that CloudSherpas is themselves a product of a merger. Back in March they merged with New York company GlobalOne. At that time they received a $20 million dollar investment from Columbia Capital, who had previously invested $15 million in GlobalOne.

This $40 million dollar round was led by GreenSpring Associates and brought their total vc funding to $62.6 million. Columbia Capital and Delta-V Capital joined in the new round. Australia-based Queensland Investment Corporation, an institutional investment manager, also participated.

CloudSherpas reportedly employs 350 people and plans to have a head count of 500 in the coming year.

Linkage:

Find CloudSherpas on the web here

Source: TC

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Maryland Media Firm: Discovery Communications, Backs “Pinterest For Learning” Grockit

The Maryland mega media firm that owns cable channels TLC and the Discovery Channel, Discovery Communications has made a financial and strategic investment into valley startup, Grockit.

Grockit has iterated several times since coming onto the scene in 2006 as a video test prep course for standardized testing. They relaunched at TechCrunch 50 in 2008 as a hybrid of test prep and a multi-player learning game.

Today, they’ve iterated again, keeping their feet firmly implanted in social learning. They’ve added a new product to the mix called Learnist, which allows teachers and students to discover, share and clip content from the web to a clipboard. Grockit’s Founder Farbood Nivi told TechCrunch that the Learnist product has seen 400% growth and doubled their user session length from 10 minutes to over 20 minutes.

While Learnist targets students in grades K-12 quickly checking out the site you’ll find that in can easily be expanded to assist with socially learning anything from K-college and beyond.

TechCrunch is reporting that the financial investment from Discovery Communications was $20 million dollars. GigaOM is quick to add that the strategic partnership includes shared technology, marketing, distribution and promotion. Of course everyone is thinking that Discovery will integrate the Learnist and Grockit technology into the web/social companion products for Discovery’s top brands.

“We think of our audience as people who are curious,” said Roy Gilbert, CEO of Grockit said to GigaOM. “We’re blurring the layer between things I need to learn in the classroom – common core [content] – and general nonfiction media. People are coming to the internet, not just to do differential equations but to learn about what’s going on in Syria.”

Linkage:

Checkout Grockit here

More startup news from “everywhere else” here

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Chicago Startup: Rentalutions, Helping Landlords New & Old

The downturn in the economy over the last few years has forced several people, into becoming landlords. People who had a great deal on a house before the economy went down, were forced to start renting property. They wanted to hold onto their property and at the same time make money to pay their mortgages down so these new properties weren’t a total write off.

A Chicago Startup, incubating at 1871, called Rentalutions is there to help those landlords and then tens of thousands more who’ve been renting out property for years.

Rentalutions is a complete landlord tenant system. Tenants can set up recurring rental payments using the system. They can also turn in maintenance requests around the clock and communicate with their landlords directly.

For landlords, Rentalutions is one centralized system that keeps up with just about every aspect of renting property. The platform even allows landlords to list a vacant property and screen for potential tenants within the system. Once they take on a new tenant they can convert that record to a tenant record without having to re-input data over and over again.

Rentalutions, founded by two long time friends Ryan Coon and Laurence Jankeow, hopes to become the complete turn key system for the over 6 million do it yourself landlords across the country. The company provides do it yourself landlords with similar resources that some of the top property management companies are using.

We got a chance to interview Coon. Check out our interview below.

Indian Startup: EduBuzzer Makes It Simple For Schools To Communicate With Students & Parents

Although the fundamentals of communication are often taught in schools, sometimes schools, colleges and universities have the hardest time communicating with students and even parents. That’s the problem that Indian startup EduBuzzer is fixing with their simple and easy to use application.

EdBuzzer makes it easy for any school teacher, or administrator at any level of education to communicate quickly with one set of students, a single student or the entire student body. EdBuzzer makes it easy to send out assignments, grades, and even newsletters without the cumbersome nature of bulk and mass emails.

The startup based in Chandigarh India, prides itself on absolute simplicity. They want busy teachers and even secretaries to be able to help communicate important messages at anytime.

EduBuzzer is actually a product from educational startup Chalkpad which bills themselves as “Educational Technology Specialists”.

We got to talk with Abhiraj Malhorta a trailblazer at Chalkpad and one of the co-founders of EduBuzzer. Check out the interview below.

UK Startup Eyejusters Changing The Vision In The Developing World

I know right about now you’re wondering why in the world we are covering an eye glass company on nibletz, the voice of startups everywhere else.

Well truth be told this is a special eye glass company. First off they’ve developed a new technology that will greatly benefit those with varying degrees of bad vision.

Secondly, they’ve found a way to make their eye glass technology make an impact and a difference in developing countries.

First off, Eyejusters has created a new technology for those folks that need glasses to see. The technology they’ve developed is called “SlideLens” technology. This allows the user to change the actual lens within the glass frame. Say you need one strength of reading glasses in the light, and another when it’s not so light. This can be achieved by simply turning a dial.

The real neat thing about Eyejusters is how their product is changing the vision in the developing world.

The premise behind Eyejusters is to turn the knob on the lenses until the user is comfortable seeing out of them and they improve your site. Once the user finds the comfortable spot the glasses are working their optimum with no real eye exam to boot. That’s why the Eyejusters product is so valuable in developing countries.

Many people in these countries can’t afford regular doctor’s care, much less a specialist like an Opthamologist. With SlideLens technology and Eyejusters the folks in developing countries don’t need an opthamologist the eye exam is actually built into the glasses.

We got a chance to talk with Owen Reading, one of the co-founders of Eyejusters about their startup, product, social cause and how they’ve approached the product itself in the same way any startup would. Check out the interview below.

Chicago Startup: ParkWhiz Raises $2 Million, Parking Startups Are Hot In Chicago

Monday we reported that Chicago parking startup SpotHero had raised $2.5 million in funding. That was big news for the ExcelerateLabs alumni that’s currently working out of 1871. Now, we’ve heard that another Chicago parking startup called ParkWhiz has raised $2 million dollars.

ParkWhiz’ funding round was led by Hyde Park Venture Partners. Hyde Park Angels, Amicus Capital, Alexis Ohanian, Garry Tan, Henry J Feinberg, and Amreesh Modi also participated in the investment, according to builtinchicago.com. Ohanian is the co-founder of Reddit and Tan is a partner at Y Combinator.

ParkWhiz has been around a little longer than Chicago rival SpotHero. They originally came on the scene in 2006 and in the past 6 years have generated over $10 million in parking revenue to operators. They also have access to over 3 million parking spaces.

One of ParkWhiz’ major success stories is the partnerships they’ve formed with organizations that are key in the big event space. ParkWhiz is partnered with StubHub, Ticketsnow, several NFL and NCAA teams and other sports and entertainment venues.

“This financing allows us to realize our next stage of growth, beginning with the hiring of 20 additional employees,” said Aashish Dalal, CEO and co-founder of ParkWhiz said in a statement. “The wealth of knowledge and experience of our new board members will help us aggressively deliver unique capabilities to our customers and further solidify our position as the market leader.”

More than 1 million people have used ParkWhiz.com, the largest, fastest growing, online parking reservation company in the U.S. ParkWhiz allows users to compare price, location and amenities. Drivers may reserve special event parking and purchase discounted downtown parking at up to 80% off drive-up rates. The company works with over 2,000 parking lots nationwide, giving customers access to over 3 million parking spaces. ParkWhiz’s national footprint has enabled them to provide parking spot inventory that far exceeds their closest competition.

Joining co-founder Aashish Dalal on the company’s board will be Ira Weiss of Hyde Park Venture Partners and Henry J. Feinberg, former partner at Technology Crossover Ventures, the world’s largest technology oriented Venture Capital firm. Mr. Feinberg is currently the Chairman of Maxim Revenue Management Solutions.

“ParkWhiz offers a transformational service for finding optimal automobile parking,” said Henry J. Feinberg. “ParkWhiz will change how consumers and parking lot owners and operators do business similar to how Expedia changed travel, Netflix changed entertainment and Zillow changed real estate.”

Linkage:

Find ParkWhiz Here

BuiltinChicago Here

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California Startup: SportsBoard Brings The Coaches Clipboard Mobile & To The Cloud

About 8 years ago software entrepreneur Gregg Jacobs was watching his youngest son try out for club lacrosse and soccer teams in California. What he noticed back then was that coaches for both sports were feverishly keeping notes on clip boards, turning pages, and scribbling things down wherever they could. Jacobs knew from his software background that there had to be a better way, however smartphones were just on the cusp and tablets hadn’t even been invented.

FastForward to 2011. With smartphones growing increasingly fast and iPads taking a firm place in the home and in enterprise, Jacobs decided to revisit that idea, and started California startup SportsBoard.

SportsBoard, in it’s simplest form is a player relationship management system for coaches. Think SalesForce or ACT for coaches to manage players. The platform has a cloud based component and a mobile component which allows coaches to quickly make entries for later analysis from their iPhones or iPads. When they get home, back to the office, or the gym they can quickly sync to the cloud and manage their teams on a desktop or laptop computer.

SportsBoard is now optimized for ten different sports; Soccer, Basketball, Baseball, Lacrosse, Football, Ice Hockey, Field Hockey, Tennis, Volleyball and Rugby. Jacobs tells us that Softball is in the pipeline as well.

Over the last eight months over 100 Division I through Division 3 colleges have adopted SportsBoard as their player management system.

We got a chance to interview Jacobs about SportsBoard and growing his startup just far enough outside the valley, to be considered “everywhere else”

Dave McClure, The King Of Everywhere Else, Makes First German Investment: Versus IO

While here at nibletz we are the “voice of everywhere else” Dave McClure, Sith Lord at 500 Startups and founder of Geeks on A Plane, is the reigning king of “everywhere else”, to prove that his first investment in a German startup has just been revealed. McClure has invested $100,000 in comparison platform Versus IO.

We’ve been covering the German startup since earlier this year and even had the opportunity to interview their CEO Ramin Far, earlier this month.

Versus IO in it’s simplest form is a comparison engine that allows you to compare two different things side by side. With Versus IO you can compare gadgets, electronics, and even cities. They are quickly ramping up to having 640 different comparison verticals.

It’s not just a “hot or not” style comparison either, for instance in their cities comparisons they use over 100 different factors including: education, crime rates, climate, infrastructure, safety, economy, business, culture, people and a whole lot more. What makes the platform truly unique is the fact that they aren’t in the business of selling things so there’s no chance that the comparison’s get skewed over things like price, discount and offer.

“We’re extremely excited about the investment from Dave and the role he will play in helping to take VERSUS IO to the next level in terms of what we offers users and the direction of the business”, Far, said in a statement. “Dave’s experience of working with growing companies will be invaluable for us moving forwards. 2013 has the potential to be huge for us to be even more successful than 2012 has been.”

This $100,000 investment is the first for McClure in a German company and it appears that it’s separate from the 500startups fund.

Linkage:

Check out VersusIO here

Here’s Dave McClure’s blog

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New York Startup: Treydit Kiss & Trade Clothes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Orlando Startup: ASPIREDU Is Helping College Students Stay In School

A group of educators based in Florida has teamed together to help prevent attrition and improve the dropout rate of college students. It’s a pretty big goal for Orlando startup ASPIREDU.

They’re not offering incentives, rewards or a cute little app to manage the school day better. The team behind ASPIREDU is taking their decades of experience in education and using an analytics tool to help identify at risk students enrolled in online courses so that they can help these schools better manage student retention.

While they’ve been working on ASPIREDU for quite some time they just launched their public facing product after months of testing, yesterday.

The combine a simple overview of at risk students with easy access to details about each student, which helps colleges and universities have a better overall picture of students that could drop out.

ASPIREDU was formed after one of the cofounders, who had been in higher education for ten years, found that she was spending over half her day working on student retention. When she went searching for a software tool to help identify and manage at risk students there wasn’t one.

The bootstrapped startup received a little seed money in the form of a grant from Startup Weekend EDU.

We got a chance to talk with one of the founders Kevin Kopas, about ASPIREDU, because the other two cofounders are still working on ASPIREDU while employed full time they’ve withheld their names for this interview. Check out the interview below.

Charlotte Startup: Womadz Is A Crowdsourced Video Advertising Platform

Have you ever watched tv and thought that you could create a better commercial for something than the one you just watched? Well that’s exactly what Diek Minkhorst and Sam Reitman were thinking one night while they were just chilling in college. Most advertising is boring and while advertisers want to attract buyers with hot models, and beautiful pictures, these ads don’t resonate well because they aren’t the actual users.

That’s why Minkhorst and Reitman created Charlotte startup Womadz (they have a presence in New York as well).

Womadz hosts online video contests for their brand partners encouraging film makers and those people that just make silly videos for fun, to make videos about products and advertisers. The video makers have an opportunity to win prizes and the advertisers have the option to have great content provided to them by a variety of people. That’s where the crowdsourced part comes in.

Once the video contest is initiated Womadz encourages the general public to check out the videos and vote on the ones they like the best. That’s where the winning and the prizes come in.

We got a chance to talk with Minkhorst about Womadz. Check out our interview below.