Maryland Startup CoFounders Lab Is Connecting CoFounders

When Shahab Kaviani sat down and had some time to reflect about his previous startup, HyperOffice he quickly realized that the cofounding team behind that startup drove it’s success. He admits that they bootstrapped almost the entire project. He also says in hindsight their timing was lousy, but the cofounding team kept the startup together.

Finding the right cofounders should actually be at the top of the priority list in any startup. CoFounders lab is one of many startups that look to match people with cofounders. FounderSync is one of those startups that uses an online approach. FounderDating uses a hybrid online offline approach merging an online community with in person events.

CoFounders lab also blends online and offline through in person events. We hope that he’s not too late to this party as well. Of course we all know that when the Dodge brothers went to build cars they weren’t worried that Ford was already doing the exact same thing.

Kaviani was fortunate enough to get selected into the Fort accelerator in Washington DC. After graduating from the program the company moved to Rockville Maryland where they are currently based now. They recently pitched the “Pitch Across Maryland” bus as part of Startup Maryland back in September.

We got a chance to talk with Kaviani. Check out our interview below.

Australian Startup Releases New Dual Screen Video Platform For Event Organizers

If you’re throwing a big event, like we are, than you know that the audience at home is just as valuable as the audience on site. Event organizers are constantly looking for the best way to stream their events online and give at home viewers a similar experience to what those on site are seeing.

Australian startup Cogent has launched an exciting new video platform, primarily targeted towards live events. The platform called Eventer, is a dual screen video platform. This allows viewers at home to partake in the direct feed video from the stage and possibly watch the audience or a slide presentation at the same time. There are currently other video startups working in a similar space, but none so focused on events themselves.

Eventer has already been tested in Australia and in the United States. The San Francisco Music Tech event was the first US event to test out Eventer. The event’s co-founder Brian Zisk said that the event saw viewers at home staying engaged for 40 minutes at a time. In Australia, the Sustaining Women In Business conference also tested out the technology and it worked well for them too.

The unique platform delivered by Cogent and Eventer allows viewers to see everything in real time. Viewers at home can see the slide transitions and any special effects that may be happening on stage.

We got a chance to talk to the team from Eventer, check out the interview below.

The Altsie Report: Summary Of A Startup That Didn’t Quite Work Out Part I

Editor’s note: We covered Altsie, a Minneapolis startup that helped promote and drive independent films and local commerce around the films. During that time we got to know Lucas Rayala, the startups founder. A few weeks back Rayala announced that he was shutting down Altsie and shared his thoughts on it with TechCrunch. Rayala wanted to give other startup founders an inside look at a startup that “didn’t quite work out”.

His insightful report is very valuable to any startup founder and we will be publishing the report in four parts over the next two weeks. Anyone that feels this information is mission critical and would like the entire report in a downloadable format can simply email startups@nibletz.com and we will gladly send it to you.

Overview:

What’s Altsie?

Altsie was a new way to go to the movies. Altsie partnered with hip neighborhood businesses across the country to create alternative screening venues and bring customers a new, exciting theater experience. Using some web 2.0 magic, businesses could, in minutes, set up a profile and schedule show times through our site. Altsie’s vision was to disrupt the old Hollywood theater model; with the help of overnight shipping, we had the ability to create a hundred micro theaters overnight.

It just didn’t work out that way.

Incorporated as a Minnesota LLC, Altsie showed films from April to November of 2012. During that time, Altsie partnered with seven businesses across three states and has had thirty screenings of seven award-winning films. Altsie made money through online ticket sales.

We closed in November of 2012 for various reasons, including a need to reinvent the original idea, a lack of funds to do so, and other personal reasons.

This paper describes some market observations we made during our short existence, some of the problems we ran into, and potential areas we think other startups might be interested in exploring. This paper is written from our limited perspective, but we believe that a perspective from someone with their boots on the ground is pretty valuable.

Market Summary:

The Universe of Theater Ticket Sales and the Cost of a Theater

The MPAA Annual Report states that in the US/Canadian market, theater admissions were 1.3 billion in 2011, totaling $10.2B in sales ($32.6B worldwide sales). Attendance has fallen steadily over the last decade, down from 1.6 billion admissions in 2002, while sales have remained relatively stagnant due to increased ticket costs. 1

We wanted to position Altsie as a nationwide alternative to traditional big-box theaters, and we believed we had a significant cost advantage. To put things in perspective, an owner today will spend $2M to build and equip a standard movie theater2. For $2M, a business like Altsie could install HD projectors, screens, and speaker equipment in one thousand businesses across the country. That would instantly make that business, by location, the largest theater system in the United States, surpassing Regal and AMC combined.3

There’s a lot of power in small.

Competitors

Altsie was the first company to partner with small businesses to create ticketed screenings on any scale. We were excited to be the first to explore this space. Other companies license films for non-theatrical venues, but securing the rights to show a movie through these companies is a byzantine and expensive process. Swank and The Criterion Collection are the two main competitors in this arena. Neither site caters to small businesses. Both are built for larger organizations like cruise lines, colleges, and prisons. These larger clients are allowed to screen movies concurrent with a film’s normal theatrical release; however, neither Swank nor Criterion will license a film to a small business until after it has been released to DVD.

Small businesses we spoke to did not like to work with either Swank or Criterion. They’re too expensive, starting at $175 to license a movie for a single showing. This makes it difficult for businesses to break even on an event. Small businesses have limited time and resources to procure films—Altsie knew this and made procurement easy, licensing straightforward, and event-creation a snap.

Altsie Audience Demographics

The majority of Altsie’s customers were between 20 and 40 years of age. Anecdotally, they almost all attended our events as a “date night,” and the majority of tickets were purchased by women. Customers generally bought meals and drinks at our showings—this is in line with industry studies, which show that 43% of moviegoers go to a sit-down or fast food restaurant immediately before or after their movie.4

Footnotes:

1 MPAA Annual Report, Theatrical Market Statistics, 2011, http://bit.ly/HH1VzH

2 Reed Construction Data, Movie Theater: Construction Cost Estimating, http://bit.ly/P7E68B

3 As of this writing, Regal and AMC are the two largest theater systems in the US, with 548 and 378 locations, respectively. http://bit.ly/dFuOQP

4 The Arbitron Cinema Advertising Study: Appointment Viewing by Young, Affluent, Captive Audiences, 2003, http://bit.ly/NGo3gO

Market Summary Continued:

This was a big sell to businesses who wished to partner with Altsie, and locations that paired specials with their showings were effective at pushing food sales. Our first show had 35 guests and created the highest Sunday-night sales “in memory” for The Nicollet’s owner, Jeremy Konecny, whose café did record pizza sales because of the special he offered with his tickets. While Altsie used group buying to get the word out about our service, for our business customers, Altsie wanted to position itself as an alternative to services like Groupon or LivingSocial.

What market trends made us believe Altsie would succeed?

Decreasing Number of Theaters

The high cost of showing a movie in a traditional venue has led to fewer, larger theaters as owners consolidate costs. The number of indoor movie theaters has gone from 7,151 in 1995 to 5,561 in 2009, a 22% decrease5. The decrease in locations means, necessarily, that theaters are moving farther away from customers. You can quote any number of theories as to why attendance has decreased, but increased travel-time will limit physical attendance. However, because of the unchallenged position this model has in the live-screening market, theaters have been allowed to continue this unhealthy pattern. And this trend isn’t stabilizing, it’s accelerating. At a minimum of $65K per projector, the conversion to digital will be the final straw for many small theaters. “Convert or die,” is a maxim repeated by John Fithian, CEO and president of the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO), the largest exhibition trade organization in the world. He’s right, for the traditional market. Large distributors will soon discontinue using film as a medium—Fox Pictures intends to do so in the next two years. NATO estimates that 1,000 venues will go under as other distributors follow suit, eliminating another 20% of our nation’s theaters. 6

This trend is sad, but the gaps left by the retreating theaters leave room for a new business model. Altsie wanted to be a model that brought movies back into neighborhoods, at a reasonable price and cost structure. There’s another growing trend we tried to take advantage of to do this.

Increasing Number of Films

There are over 10,000 films created in North America every year. The Sundance Film Festival reports 12,000 submissions (both national and international) to their contest annually. Of that, they screen 200.7 In 2009, only 3 films that participated in our nation’s flagship festival were offered theatrical release, as reported in a roundtable discussion by industry experts in McSweeney’s San Francisco Panorama. 8 The discussion participants went on to talk about the need for a new method of distribution for this growing market. As the costs to create a film decrease, they note, directors do not need to rely as heavily on production companies. The sheer number of films now available made it relatively easy for Altsie to find quality work for our audiences.

Footnotes:

5 National Association of Theater Owners website, http://bit.ly/5lxs5

6 Hurley, Michael, We’re About to Lose 1,000 Small Theaters That Can’t Convert to Digital. Does It Matter?, IndieWire, Feb. 23, 2012, http://bit.ly/AzLtuB

7 Sundance Film Festival Website, Film and Events page, http://bit.ly/gckpzb

8 McSweeney’s San Francisco Panorama, Jan. 1, 2010, http://bit.ly/ntA8sT

Market Summary Continued

Decreasing Projection Costs and Changing Markets

While professional equipment has gone up in price, home theater equipment has decreased in price and increased in quality. Six years ago, a high definition 1080P projector cost over $10K. Today, higher quality units are around $900. The rapidly decreasing cost presents an inevitable problem for the film industry. It’s a problem the record industry was caught famously unprepared for with the rise of MP3s—technology has created a new method for distribution, and unless a business model exists to harness this new technology, illegal screenings will become more common. Altsie, of course, hoped to head off that trend and meet the market need.

Increased Online Buying and “Going Local”

Concepts which would not have been possible ten years ago have become realities because of a recent critical mass of internet users and the expansion of mobile. “Local” is the new buzzword for internet businesses. Customers are excited to use the internet to discover new adventures in their cities, as exemplified by the rapid adoption of services such as Groupon, FourSquare, Yelp, and more. Groupon’s 2011 Letter to Shareholders states that they have 33 million active users worldwide who purchased 170 million deals last year.9 “Going local” works, and there is a large market for online and social purchasing that Altsie tried to tap into. To do this, Altsie used its website as a tool to automatically organize businesses and show times, creating a flexible framework for event creation that made it easy for consumers to get local, find relevant information, and minimizes the number of clicks necessary to purchase a ticket.

Rural and Underserved Markets

Finally, not every city has an independent theater, and rural markets are underserved with respect to movie theaters in general and independent films in particular. This opens up several opportunities. Certain geographies cannot support traditional movie theaters. Altsie wanted to bring a theater experience to smaller geographies by partnering with pre-existing businesses. There is less competition with other entertainment options in these regions. Altsie saw rural communities as a major expansion point for our business and believed this had the potential to be our largest market.

There’s a second market consideration with regard to rural communities. Altsie spoke with distribution companies interested in expanding their footprint beyond the indie theaters they’re currently restricted too. They do not, of course, want to cannibalize or otherwise compete with established markets, but they see value in a separate market offering outside the urban areas. We believe this is a still an area of growth.

Footnote

9 Groupon 2011 shareholder letter, http://bit.ly/KoqnIL

We will continue to bring the rest of this report to you over the next few days! If you would like the report in it’s entirety simply email us at startups@nibletz.com

Los Angeles Startup: Smarter Stand, Works For iPad Mini Too

Dotan Saguy, the founder of Los Angeles startup Smarter Stand, has just written in to tell us that his unique device works for iPad Mini as well.

We reported about the Smarter Stand over the summer when it had surpassed 10x it’s funding goal on crowdfunding site Kickstarter. When all was said and done Smarter Stand received over 15x the original amount they had hoped for. The best part, the Smarter Stand is one of the simplest little iPad accessories ever produced.

Essentially what Saguy has done, is created a clip that holds Apple’s optional smart covers in place at one of the creases. Without the Smarter Stand, the smart covers fold like an accordion of sorts. With the Smarter Stand in place, the material and hard material under the cover remains in place and the smart cover can be converted into a stand with many different angles.

When Saguy had heard about the release of the iPad Mini he couldn’t want to get his hands on one to see if the Smarter Stand would work on the smaller smart covers. He is happy to report that it does.

If you were lucky enough to get a Smarter Stand from the original Kickstarter campaign and have since bought an iPad Mini go ahead and try it out, it works great. If you just purchased an iPad Mini and a smart cover and want the Smarter Stand all you have to do is go to smarterstand.com

Linkage:

Get a Smarter Stand today at smarterstand.com

Here are more startup stories from “everywhere else”

We hope to see YOU here!

Atlanta: Points Of Light, Starbucks & Village Capital Announce Social Startup Accelerator

Points of light, the world’s largest organization dedicated to volunteer service along with Village Capital have teamed up to launch a social entrepreneurship focused startup accelerator in Atlanta.

10 social startup teams have been selected and are coming together this week in Atlanta for an intense 12 week accelerator bootcamp. The 12 startups will receive access to mentoring, education, peer support and networking. Along with that each team has received a $10,000 seed investment. At the end of the session, the 10 startups will choose two startups from their peer group to receive additional $50,000 investments to help bring their startups to life.

The 10 startups kicking off the accelerator’s first class are:

AltruHelp (Boston) is building a software solution and online community to increase volunteerism and millennial civic engagement.
Bould (Denver) connects students with the real-world experience necessary for green careers.
CareerVillage (Boston) helps working professionals provide career information and advice directly to students.
Generation Citizen (New York) empowers young people to become engaged and effective citizens.
GivKwik (San Francisco) is a social, mobile and web platform that inspires impulse philanthropy.
HopeMob (New York) unites strangers to rally behind people with pressing needs.
Moneythink (Chicago) makes financial literacy relevant and fun for urban 11^th and 12^th graders.
MyMaryland (Silver Spring, Md.) is democracy’s first 24/7 online town hall.
Smallknot (New York) is a community crowd-funding platform for small business.
UBELONG (Washington, D.C.) provides high-impact, affordable international volunteering opportunities.

PwC Charitable Foundation and the Starbucks Foundation are also supporting the socially driven accelerator.

“Supporting productive and disruptive innovators in the research and design of sustainable, scalable programs that drive charitable endeavors is an important part of our giving philosophy,” said Chris Simmons, president, PwC Charitable Foundation, Inc. “We congratulate the 10 start-ups selected for the accelerator and look forward to seeing their individual plans to catalyze social change through innovation in the areas of education and humanitarianism.”

“At Starbucks, we believe strongly in the power of the entrepreneur and the opportunity for businesses to be the catalyst for change in their communities,” said Adam Brotman, chief digital officer, Starbucks. “We are honored to support this program and look forward the success of these ventures.”

“Entrepreneurs are bringing new thinking and innovative business models to the critical work of helping others,” said Ayesha Khanna, president of Points of Light’s Civic Incubator. “We are pleased to help these 10 promising teams successfully launch civic ventures to drive social good in communities across the country.”

“Over the next three months, these enterprises will get the best support and the toughest criticism they’ve ever received from their peers,” said Ross Baird, executive director of Village Capital. “We’ll focus on everything from customer validation to board-building to fundraising to financials, and we expect that the collaboration of these amazingly talented people will be a force multiplier for their success.”

Linkage:

Find out about Points of Light here

Here’s more startup news from “everywhere else”

Several Atlanta startups will be here, will you?

Build Your Own Video Games With UK Startup Construct 2

Have you ever wanted to build your own video game? Maybe you’re a gamer and thought you’d love your own game but didn’t know an ounce about programming? Well there’s a UK startup that’s come up with a do it yourself platform for creating video games. The startup is called Scirra and their product is Construct 2.

Through Construct 2’s easy to use interface you’ll drag and drop your game characters, game play moves and more to make a fully workable video game via HTML5. After that Construct2 gets you ready to export your new game to a variety of devices and a variety of platforms.

The system that Ashley Gullen and has brother have created makes it possible for people with no programming experience whatsoever to produce “awesome games”.

Construct2 creates Windows based games and was the follow up to Gullen’s 2007 game creation tool now dubbed “Construct Classic”. The classic version allowed people to create games in the DirectX 9 platform.

We got a chance to talk with Ashley’s brother Thomas Gullen. Check out that interview below.

Paris Startup AIRTAG Is All About Mobile Shopping INTERVIEW

A startup in Paris called AIRTAG is offering a complete suite of mobile shopping tools for retailers and e-tailers. The startup was founded by Jeremie Leroyer and Cyril Porteret who also cofounded Haiku which was sold in 2004 for $10 million euros.

AIRTAG’s complete suite of products has every facet of mobile shopping covered. AIRSHOP enables shoppers to order and pay in advance for groceries and fast food using their mobile phone. AIRFID is the rewards and loyalty card arm of the company. AIRPASS is a mobile wallet of sorts adding loyalty cards, gym keytags and even transportation passes. AIRTAG kit is the companies development tool kit for developers to interact with their PayPass applications.

The company’s stable of clients already includes McDonald’s, McCafe’, Reebok, Dior and many other globally well known brands. This has prompted AIRTAG to deploy offices throughout the world including a recently opened office in New York. They plan on adding partnerships in both the US and Canada from the New York office.

Mobile shopping and payments have grown into a huge industry and right now it’s still anyone’s game. Google got off to a very rocky start with Google Wallet. Three of the four major US wireless carriers teamed up to help create ISIS an alternative to Google Wallet which was supposed to have seen a larger national footprint heading into this years holiday season.

According to the co-founders of AIRTAG, Japan is light years ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to allowing smartphones to manage people’s lives. Since selling their first startup to Japanese investors both Leroyer and Porteret have spent a lot of time in Japan where they noticed everyone used their phones for everything including bus fare, key locks, and payments. AIRTAG’s hope is to help replicate that system across the world.

We had a chance to interview the AIRTAG team. Check out the interview below.

New Orleans Car Advertising Startup Advercar Raises $2 Million In Seed Round

Advercar is a New Orleans based startup that lets people make money by wrapping or putting other advertisements on their vehicle and driving around.

The startup was founded by Neil Turner who was the former Chief Strategy Officer at iSeatz. Advercar pays drivers to put advertisements on the front, sides and backs of their cars. It’s very similar to taxicab advertising except on private vehicles. The company charges advertisers $280 per month which is roughly the same amount charged by taxi cabs.

Advercar passes up to $100 per month to the driver. They also say that some advertisers give drivers the opportunity to make more than the $100 per month.

Advercar’s $2 million dollar seed round was led by Canaan Partners. 1-800-Flowers, Branford Castle Private Equity, New Orleans Startup Fund, Jit Sexana and TiE Angels Boston also participated in the round. With this round 1-800-Flowers CEO Jim McCann and Canaan partner Deepak Karma have joined Advercar’s Board of Directors.

The startup’s idea was originally pitched last year during New Orleans Entrepreneur Week as part of their Power Pitch competition where they won first place.

Advercar already has 5,000 drivers. The company tracks their drivers with a GPS tool that allows them to report back to advertisers and show them where their ad was seen. They also use a calculation method set forth by the Traffic Audit Bureau that allows them to calculate, roughly, how many people saw the ad. Advercar has a special group of AdverMoms that allows advertisers to reach other moms.

TechCrunch’s Anthony Ha asked Turner if it felt strange for an Advercar driver to drive around with advertising on their car. Turner replied;

“You notice for your first 20 minutes, but after that you forget they’re on. You do notice if you go to a grocery store, because people will be staring at your car.”

Linkage

Find advercar online here

Source: Silicon Bayou TechCrunch

More startup news is here

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Nashville: Jumpstart Foundry’s Marcus Whitney Named CTO Of The Year By Nashville Technology Council

Marcus Whitney, Jumpstart Foundry, Nashville startups,accelerator,Moontoast, Boston startup,startup,startups,startup news

(photo: marcuswhitney.com)

Marcus Whitney is a renaissance man of sorts when it comes to entrepreneurism and startups in Nashville and Boston Massachusetts. Some of his credentials include being an advisor and curriculum lead at Nashville’s Jumpstart Foundry accelerator where he traditionally fires up the troops on day one. He is also an advisor to several Nashville area startups, co-founder of Southernalpha.com and an overall leader in Nashville’s startup community.

It’s actually for his day job though, as the CTO of social marketing, commerce and analytics startup Moontoast that has earned him the title of CTO Of The Year by the Nashville Technology Council.

Moontoast was founded in 2008 as a social knowledge base provider that eventually led to the social marketing and analytics suite that they employ today to companies big and small including some on the Fortune 500. Their stable of top-shelf clients include branding power house Proctor & Gamble, Ford, Kirkland’s, and Universal. Even Nashville country powerhouse record label Big Machine records uses Moontoast, you may have heard of their superstar Taylor Swift.

Whitney has grown to become an expert in the world of social and email engagement. Prior to starting Moontoast in 2008 he spent the previous four years of his career as Director of Technology and Partner at Emma. Emma is an email marketing firm that uses creative, out of the box approaches, to again engage their over 10,000 customers.

Whitney’s energetic personality and real life experiences have led him to be engaging in person as well. In different discussions with Whitney we’ve talked about how he and his team at Jumpstart Foundry are able to pull the real entrepreneur and founder out of a startup. Some startups come into the three month accelerator program with a great idea and a horrible pitch. Whitney is able to pull the real message out which has actually led to follow on funding for several program startups.

Whitney’s latest startup is Southernalpha.com a regional tech blog focused on high growth potential startups and technology in the southeast. They’re centralizing out of Nashville at the moment with plans to rapidly expand across the south east in the same way that Silicon Prairie news covers the Silicon Prairie.

Whitney was honored at the annual Nasvhille Technology Council Awards on October 23.

Linkage:

Moontoast is here

Jumpstart Foundry is here

SouthernAlpha is here

Everywhere else is here

Florida Startup: Residency HQ Is your One Stop For All State Residency Requirements

These days there are a whole lot of people living in at least dual residencies. When thinking about dual residencies the most common thought is about snowbirds. This group of people is usually older and migrates south to Florida, for the winter, from their normal homes up north. We’re even in a dual residency scenario ourselves right now.

People who live in dual residences have a hard time keeping up with the residency requirements, laws and taxes surrounding multiple places. Florida startup, Residency HQ keeps up with that for you.

Residency HQ bills themselves as the premiere resource for all state to state residency requirements. It’s a knowledge base of information for the types of people described above and for those looking to possibly relocate to another state. Residency HQ will also help users determine which state is the most advantageous to claim primary residence in.

We got a chance to talk with Residency HQ co-founder Mat Franken. Check out the interview below.

AngelHack, World’s Biggest Hackathon Coming To DC And We Have Free Tickets

The old days, picturing a dark room filled with pocket protectors, broken glasses and keyboards are long gone. The hackathon has become a big part of our culture in the startup world. It seems like everyone with a pulse on technology has found the way to create a hackathon to design this, hack this, break into this, vet this, or program that. Microsoft recently held a huge hackathon on their Windows 8 platform. Startup Weekend holds several hackathons every week.

None of these hackathons can parallel the enormous size, booty (prize stash), resources and sponsors of Angelhack.

Angelhack is going down this weekend in 11 cities with 2500 hackers and one gigantic Angelhack crown. Hackers, coders, developers, founders and entrepreneurs will converge on Tel Aviv, Paris, London, Washington DC, Boston, Toronto, Los Angeles, Seattle, Santiago and San Francisco for one crazy weekend of hacking.

The event kicks off at 9:00am on Saturday morning and runs through 5:00pm Sunday night. This hackathon isn’t for the weak at heart though. This isn’t a turn the lights off at midnight and come back at 8am kind of hackathon. Angelhack will run continuously all weekend long.

Angelhack is one of the most critically acclaimed hackathons in the world because of the creativity and startups that it helps create. All 11 locations will narrow the field down to 25 teams from around the world. These 25 teams will win six weeks of mentorship and be flown to Silicon Valley where they’ll show off their finished products to media, investors and other startups. In the past 30% of the finalists have found enough funding to continue building out their companies.

Our good friend Anton Gelman, the CEO and co-founder of Cont3nt is the Washington DC AngelHack coordinator and he’s given nibletz 35 free tickets to the event. Just go to this link to get your ticket and enter the word “nibletz” you’ll instantly save the $60 off the hackathon ticket price and be ready to go.

Gelman told our friends at DC’s inthecapital.com:

“Over the summer, I happened to be in New York and decided to check out AngelHack New York. Crazy enough, I won! They sent us to San Francisco in the following month to compete with other winners from other countries. It was probably one of the coolest events I’ve been to, and then I thought, this was such an amazing experience in New York, why can’t we have one in D.C.? So I arranged a few meetings, made a few phone calls, and was able to convince them to host an event here in D.C. And here we are, the first AngelHack competition is going to happen this weekend!”

Did we mention that Angelhack offers $650,000 in cash and prizes. If you’re anywhere within 300 miles of Washington DC, your plans for this weekend are now set.

Linkage:

Get a free ticket to Angelhack from nibletz click here

Source: InTheCapital

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Israeli Startup: Hopflow Launches Beta For Content Sharing Platform

Hopflow is a new content discovery and sharing platform based in Tel Aviv. The startup was founded by Erez Pilosof the cofounder of Walla which is Israel’s largest internet company, equivalent to the likes of Yahoo in the United States.

With Hopflow users are served up content “automagically”. The platform automatically matches users to content that they would like and allows the end user to stream that content. Unlike other socially driven discovery platforms, Hopflow doesn’t require the user to manually follow other users. Their aggregation algorithms find and serve up the content with very little extra input needed.

On Tuesday the startup announced they’ve entered into beta on both their web and mobile platforms.

As consumers seek simpler ways to receive and share more relevant and personalized content, traditional aggregation platforms and social networks have been slow to evolve. Hopflow saves users time and effort, as well as improves content discovery by eliminating the need to manually find and follow generalized sources and filter through uninteresting or irrelevant information.

Hopflow’s network also provides a new ecosystem where content creators can break through existing online social barriers and get discovered by like-minded people. Unlike with other social networks, Hopflow doesn’t require content creators to get people to manually follow them, because every post they create and share is automatically distributed to relevant users in the Hopflow community.

Hopflow’s ‘automagic’ technology aggregates and organizes news, blog and multimedia content from all over the social web and automatically presents it through a simple, image-rich platform according to specific topics. Users can then easily re-hop (share) to their social platforms or ‘like’ the content they receive. The platform is designed to continually learn from this activity to fine-tune and deliver an even more targeted and personal experience.

Of course they realize that social discovery and aggregation is by far a new idea, but with the Pilosof behind it, we’re sure it’s different.

“The social web is full of content platforms that force people to manually follow and filter through sources and information. In this contextual age, people want tools that are simple and provide targeted information,” Pilosof said in a statement. “We believe that discovering and sharing stories about the things that interest you shouldn’t be tedious and time consuming but rather fun and easy. Hopflow eliminates unwanted noise and allows users to sit back and enjoy a beautiful image-based ‘flow’ of relevant content outside of their current social networks.”

Added Mr. Pilosof, “At some point, we’ve all experienced the frustration of being overwhelmed with too much information on our social network feeds. A portion of the content we receive when we follow individual sources is personally interesting, but a large amount quickly becomes ‘noise’ that forces us to manually organize the information or eventually decide to un-follow the source. Hopflow completely rethinks the follow model and aims to lead a paradigm shift based on following interests.”

Linkage:

Check out Hopflow here

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Swedish Startup Foap Raises $500M From Asian Investors

You know we love startups with silly names. Obviously Foap is one of those startups. The Swedish startup is creating a stock photography market place where the photographers can be anyone in the world with a smartphone or a connected camera.

The premise is simple. The user registers with the Foap platform. They upload pictures of whatever they want to and Foap sells the pictures for $10 a piece to news outlets, bloggers, and other users. You sell the rights to the photo away but heck most smartphone pics happen by accident and even if they aren’t by accident, they don’t take but a second to shoot.

Foap splits the $10 right down the middle and the photographer gets paid. Funny name, easy startup right?

To date Foap has nearly 1 million images for sale on their platform. They’ve seen over $150,000 downloads of their app and 1.4 million photos uploaded since launch.

That was enough to land $500,000 from Asian investment firm Jade Global Investments.

“We always knew we had something pretty special to offer iPhone users but the success we’ve experienced so far is unbelievable and the interest in investors from Asia has been overwhelming”, said co-founder, David Los. “We’re fully focused on growing our market of iPhone images and establishing ourselves as one of the major players in the stock imagery industry.”

“We are delighted to announcement our investment in Foap, a company that we’ve been monitoring closely over the past six months,” said Jacky Lu, CEO of Jade Global Investments based in Asia. “We believe Foap can be extremely successful and as one of the first in this space to go to market, it stands a great chance of success. The company is perfectly positioned to make a big impact on the stock photography industry and that’s something we want to be a part of.”

“We are very excited to have such an experienced investor on board. It’s not just the funding that will benefit the company, but the knowledge and expertise Jacky and the team will be able to offer”, commented Los. “The success we’ve experienced so far has been unbelievable and this round of funding means we can continue to drive forward towards reaching the ambitious goals we have set for the company

Linkage:

Check out Foap here

More startup news from “everywhere else” here

and “everywhere else” is here!

The Kolo Project Is Building A Startup Community In Saskatchewan, Canada

There’s been a lot of talk about startup communities these days. Most of it has been fueled by Brad Feld’s latest book in his startup revolution series “Startup Communities”. In the book he outlines what it takes to build great startup communities like the one found in Boulder Colorado, where Feld is based.

Of course communities across the country are taking heed. Most of the startup community stake holders I know personally were either downloading or buying Feld’s book back in September when it was published. What’s great about Feld’s book and startup communities in general is that they are popping up everywhere.

When most people think about startups and startup communities in Canada we look to Toronto, Ontario, Calgary and even Vancouver. Well the Kolo Project is a startup in itself, that is laying the foundations for a startup community in Saskatchewan.

Taunya Woods-Richardson is just one of the entrepreneurs that’s leading the efforts in Saskatchewan and she refuses to consider herself the founder. After all it’s a community they are building.

We got a chance to talk with Woods-Richardson about the Kolo Project and what’s going on in Saskatchewan. Check out our interview below.