Pennsylvania Startup: Gateskip Brings The Off Line Networking Model Online

Before you jump into this story thinking that Gateskip is just another LinkedIn wannabe, that’s not the case at all. LinkedIn is a great social network for business professionals. It’s also a great place to graduate from your Facebook existence, to just about the rest of your life.

LinkedIn has several non-intrusive ways of encouraging networking among it’s members, but they shy away from meeting new people. In fact when you want to connect with someone it asks you how you know them.  If you’re familiar with traditional Chamber of Commerce business after hours, or breakfast before hours models, the purpose of the “networking” element is to meet new people.

That’s where Conshohocken Pennsylvania based Gateskip comes in. Gateskip, along with sole founder Dan Esposito, want to bring certain elements from business after hours, breakfast before hours and BNI events to the web through this new network.

While I’ve personally used LinkedIn to outsource some work and projects to people I had some kind of connection with, the ultimate purpose for LinkedIn is to serve as a social network for professionals. Gateskip is more of a business network.  If you’re not sure about the difference, read on to the interview below.

While LinkedIn is connecting you to friends you may have had in high school or relationships you’ve formed through business, Gateskip is about generating leads for new found colleagues and exposing one users services to another user. Alas, it’s about actual networking.

Esposito talks to us in the interview below about Gateskip and Conshohocken which Esposito says is the Silicon Valley of Pennsylvania. It’s also home to startups like the new Scott Thompson led ShopRunner, half.com and OpenDesks just to name a few.

Read More…

DreamIt Ventures Expands South To Austin Texas

20120727-132140.jpg

DreamIt Ventures, the Philadelphia based accelerator, that was recently ranked one of the top the incubators in the country by Forbes magazine, has announced that they’re expanding into Austin Texas.

DreamIt is Philadelphia based, which is where they set up their initial accelerator program. They then expanded to New York City. Last year they also opened up shop in Israel with a program that currently feeds into New York but could feed into their Philadelphia program next year.

Kerry Rupp, a Philadelphia transplant from Austin Texas was overseeing the DreamIt program in Philadelphia. They recently announced the appointment of Karen Griffith Gryga as national director based in Philadelphian which frees Rupp up to return to Austin and launch their Austin program.

Austin is a great place to expand for DreamIt. There is a lot of innovation happening in Austin and the other DreamIt locations will be able to leverage their Austin based program to show off other DreamIt startup graduates at South By Southwest Interactive next year.

“We’ll be able to use it to showcase all of the other DreamIt companies that are out fundraising” when SXSW is held, Rupp said to the Austin Business Journal

As of April 2012 65 companies have successfully gone through the DreamIt program. DreamIt also has a program targeted towards minorities called DreamIt Access, that first class has 15 startup participants.

DreamIt Ventures New York program finishes with a Demo Day on August 8th. Philadelphia’s program kicks off the weekend of September 6th and 7th. The Philadelphia class will hold Demo Day December 5th. Austin’s program will start on December 14th which times the ending right up against SXSWi 2013.

Linkage:

Check out DreamIt Ventures here

Source: Austin Business Journal

Nibletz is the voice of Startups “everywhere else”

We are a startup helping Startups click here to support us

Disgraced Yahoo CEO,Scott Thompson, Now CEO At Pennsylvania Startup ShopRunner

20120723-174928.jpg

Last week Yahoo announced the ultimate in poaching executives attracting longtime Google Executive,Marissa Mayer to the open CEO position. Yahoo had been looking for a CEO to replace Scott Thompson after he was ousted for fabricating a Computer Science degree on his resume.

After leaving Yahoo it was unclear what he would do next. Today, several news sites including siliconvalley.com have reported that Thompson is now the CEO of Pennsylvania startup ShopRunner.

ShopRunner is based in Conshohocken Pennsylvania with a satellite office in Silicon Valley’s Meno Park. Thompson will most likely spend a lot of time at the Menlo Park location. He has been based in the Valley throughout a large portion of his career. Prior to the Yahoo appointment, Thompson was a high ranking executive at EBay owned PayPal.

eBay also owns a portion of ShopRunner, a service that provides shopping perks to a number of paid subscribers at various website e-commerce partners.

With Thompson’s experience at PayPal he should do very well at ShopRunner.

“Joining ShopRunner is a tremendous opportunity to build on the strong foundation that the company has already established. While PayPal and ShopRunner are fundamentally different businesses, there are similarities in each of their success,” Thompson said in the company’s news release.

Siliconvalley.com did notice that the news release announcing Thompson’s hiring made no reference about his educational background. It’s obvious that ShopRunner is not concerned about it.

“We are thrilled that Scott has taken us up on our offer to lead ShopRunner’s continued growth,” ShopRunner co-founder and its current CEO Mike Golden said in Monday’s news release. Golden will continue as president of the company.

Linkage:

Find out more about ShopRunner here

Source: siliconvalley.com

Nibletz is roadtrippin to startups “everywhere else” through September 2013 more info here

Interview With Pennsylvania Startup: Mountain Of Agents, A New Kind Of Real Estate Directory

There are several varieties of real estate agent directory web sites out there on the internet. Most of them are either from a realty association, a real estate company or the professional real estate agents themselves. Well a startup in Bucks County Pennsylvania has taken the real estate directory into their own hands by providing a real estate directory for consumers, by consumers. That directory is called Mountain of Agents.

Michael Becker the founder of Mountain of Agents explains that creating a real estate agent directory for consumers by consumers isn’t their only differentiator. Mountain of Agents has simplified the ratings system, which in turn makes it more transparent than other directories.

Mountain of Agents has a simple ratings system that’s done by tally instead of long drawn out text based reviews. Also, in order to rate the agent you must be logged into Facebook making it harder to manipulate the ratings system. The Facebook integration also allows the user/rater to share that rating and their agent on Facebook, which of course is the 2012 equivalent of word-of-mouth, which is the driving force behind good real estate agent relationships.

The main goal Becker is trying to achieve with Mountain of Agents, is the need for transparency. The startup was born out of a bad experience Becker had that ended up delaying his real estate search because they had to fire the agent. He talks more about that in the interview below.

Read More…

Philly Startup & Tech BBQ July 18th

20120628-181712.jpg

The Philly Startup Listserv and other leaders in the Philadelphia area startup and entrepreneurial community are holding a relaxing shindig on July 18th.

The event,being dubbed the “PSL Summer BBQ Bash” is happening from 6-8 pm on Wednesday July 18th.

The event is open to PSL members and anyone in the Philly startup and tech community.

The $25 ticket covers drink tickets, delicious food and a fun time for all. It’s a pitch free networking and fun weekday event.

With the time and being on a weekday there’s no excuse to not come and hangout with great members of the Philly tech and startup scene.

And of course Philly’s own TicketLeap is handling the ticket sales here

Philly Startup: TicketLeap Kills The Frog

20120626-001154.jpg

Back in April we reported that Philly event ticketing startup TicketLeap was the first ticketing company to offer reserved seat ticket mapping for user created events.

On Monday evening an alarming post came across the Philly startup listserv. TicketLeap CEO Chris Stanchak announced that “the frog is dead”. What? The frog is dead I thought to myself. Was TicketLeap shutting down, we’re they acquired?

After reading the post thoroughly TicketLeap has gone through a rebranding and with that they killed off their mascot frog. The Kermit’s of the world wept in a moment of silence. Actually, though, this is good news for Stanchak and the team.

Stanchak said in his note to the Philly startup and tech community:

As many of you know, we’ve been quite busy working on our platform over the last two years since we relaunched it in the cloud on AWS. Our product team continues to astound me and I couldn’t be prouder. We are a product first company, but we felt like it was time to catch up some other areas.

So……I’m happy to say that we’ve taken another big step on this great ride and launched a new brand identity for TicketLeap – we feel it best reflects us as a company….and in order to do that we had to kill the frog (gasp!).

The new logo accompanies a relaunch of the TicketLeap website, iPad, iPhone and Android apps. Key elements of the new redesign include making the site more social, user friendly and adds the ability for event organizers to add mobile box office, a feature that Eventbrite released last year.

The new social initiatives include deeper integrations with Facebook and Twitter which allow people to socialize around a certain event. VentureBeat also reports that TicketLeap will be able to pull valuable demographic analytics about events set up through the service.

Unfortunately for the frog though, it looks like he’s going to be somebody’s fried frog legs dinner sometime soon.

Linkage:

Check out TicketLeap’s relaunch here at TicketLeap.com

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

Help us stay on the road covering the best Startups everywhere else here’s the link

Pennsylvania Startup: Dollar Rubber Club, What Do You Think They Do? Interview

You may be surprised to find out that grown men still get school girl giddy about buying condoms at the local drugstore. I’m in my thirties and still see the discomfort that some of my friends my age have going into WahlGreens and buying condoms. The experience is compounded when you have to ask the pharmacist or store worker where the condoms are located.

There’s a chance that you could bump into your ex-girlfriend, your girlfriends mom, someone you went to school with or someone that knows your parents. Even in you late 20’s and 30’s this can be a source of embarrassment or at the least, a slightly uncomfortable situation.

Picture this scenario, you go into your local CVS thinking that tonight may be the night you have sex with your new girlfriend for the first time, and then when you’re coming down the condom aisle, purchase in hand, your new girlfriend shows up to pick up a prescription. These things happen all the time.

That’s why Dan Elwell and Anthony Eagleton, the co-founders of “Dollar Rubber Club” have gone head first into the condom by mail business.

Dollar Rubber Clubs condoms are priced competitively, come in discreet packaging and are even sent with a little silk bag that you could keep in your sock drawer.

In the interview below the break Elwell explains why the condom business, and how they stockpile condoms and turn orders around same time to keep the customers satisfied.

Read More…

Pittsburgh Startup: DuoLingo Gets Investment From Ashton Kutcher

DuoLingo,Ashton Kutcher,Pittsburgh startup,startups,funding,tech.li,techcrunch,venturebeatPittsburgh startup DuoLingo has just announced a $3.3 million dollar round of funding led by Fred Wilson’s Union Square Ventures along with actor turned tech investor Ashton Kutcher.. This article in the Post Gazette said Kutcher made this investment personally and no reference is made to his VC firm A-Grade investments.

Kutcher is known to journey outside the borders of Silicon Valley with his tech investments. He heavily vets his investments for game changing technologies. Kutcher recently invested in Des Moines mobile payment startup Dwolla. Although Kutcher hails from the same area, it was more about the technology, and the entrepreneur rather than just being from the same area.

With DuoLingo it’s obviously about the technology and the work that scientist/co-founders Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker have put into the startup so far.

DuoLingo is a translation software. Although there are a few very technical articles about DuoLingo’s technology, to put it into layman’s terms DuoLingo provides a platform for real life translation. While Google translate can be great for a straight up word for word translation, DuoLingo and their algorithms translate pages on the internet, in a more “real world” conversational way.

When you’re doing the real-world stuff, such as reading a news report in German or French, you really feel like you’re accomplishing something,” von Ahn said in a press release. “It reinforces why you’re working to understand this new language.”

While DuoLingo is great for translation they also enter an element of education as well. As the Post Gazette explains:

Users can scroll over words if they need clues for their translations, and the program automatically detects blatant errors. The site also is designed to track words or concepts that give users trouble and to focus on those for future lessons.


The next phase of DuoLingo includes adding a document translator to it’s already existing web based platform for commercial uses. To get to this point DuoLingo used a pretty extensive beta testing process where von Ahn reports that the beta testers translated tens of millions of sentences.

By crowd sourcing the translations the software is able to pick up the most commonly used translations and achieve better accuracy.

Von Ahn is a 33 year old junior professor at Carnegie Mellon University, where he earned the honor of A. Nico Habermann associate professor of computer science. That’s an honor given to a distinguished junior professor every three years.

If you think that you’ve heard von Ahn’s name before it’s because you probably have. In 2007 von Ahn created the puzzle identifying system Captcha, the system used to verify that a human is filling out most forms. He sold that company to Google for an undisclosed sum.

von Ahn’s other credits include inventing “human computation” which is a form of crowd-sourcing   humans to help computers solve problems that are beyond the technology.

von Ahn said that his goal with DuoLingo is to form a universally readable internet.

Linkage:

For more on this visit the Pittsburgh Post Gazette

Curious about Ashton Kutcher’s investments visit his Crunchbase Profile here

Nibletz is the voice of startups everywhere else. Here are more stories from everywhere else

We’re on a sneaker strapped startup roadtrip, Help us out here and watch the video below:

Pittsburgh Startup: NoWait Is Kicks Restaurant Wait Times Ass

I like casual dining and I like chain restaurants. As you guys know we travel all the time, especially during our sneaker strapped nationwide startup road trip. Casual dining and chain restaurants save us time, and aggregation because I know what’s on the menu and what to expect.

One of the problems though is wait times. They vary from state to state and city to city. The way wait times are handled also varies from state to state, city to city and restaurant to restaurant. You may wait until your name is called over a PA system. You may have to wait until the host or hostess screams your name out loud. Or you may have to wait until the beeper/vibrator goes off in your pocket.

Here’s a scenario for you. You arrive at a nice casual dining restaurant or a chain, that’s in a nice big outdoor mall type shopping center. The Apple store is just across the parking lot, and too far for the restaurant pager to work. You want to go to the Apple store but you arrive at the restaurant at 7:25 and the Apple store closes at 9, oh well you’ll have to wait until another day.

Now imagine if the restaurant could automagically text you when your table is ready. Now you can go just about anywhere within reason, and wait for your table. Imagine if you could text the restaurant back and tell them you really need 20 more minutes.

All of this has become a reality thanks to Pittsburgh startup NoWait.

NoWait uses a system fueled by iPads and other iOS devices that keeps the host/hostess, managers, servers and customers in-sync thanks to the cloud. The host/hostess app has a very familiar feel to it, reminiscent of the paper, or white board systems that many restaurants have employed until now. But thanks to the power of Apple, the cloud and no wait, there’s a lot of back end functionality that maximizes convenience and time for the customer. Of course time is our most precious commodity.

This is the idea behind NoWait, founded by Robb Meyer, Luke Panza, Richard Colvin and James Belt.

Really it was all a matter of time before someone somewhere developed a system like this and, it happened to be these four guys, and according to their testimonial video it’s working out great.  Their video includes feedback from managers of chains like the Spaghetti Warehouse and local favorites like Burgatory Bar in Pittsburgh.

Now of course we know that no startup is going to put bad testimonials into their video but the testimonials seemed authentic and there’s a lot of footage provided that shows active, busy restaurants utilizing the technology.

NoWait’s quick pitch is that they are the “Open Table” of casual dining. This seems like a good analogy but it may not necessarily do NoWait justice. Where OpenTable requires the adoption of the user themselves, NoWait brings to their technology to anyone who gets in line at the restaurant.

Now if you’re one of those people that doesn’t do texting, doesn’t have a text messaging plan or god forbid you don’t have a phone (chances are you aren’t reading this website), you can still have your name called and wait around the host stand. There won’t be a huge crowd waiting, everyone else will be out enjoying their evening until they get their text message.

One of our favorite sites, DailyDealMedia doesn’t quite understand how NoWait reduces wait time, so let’s explain it real quick.

Now using NoWait instead of pen and paper, you eliminate the messy writing that can mean you call Dan 100 times over the loudspeaker instead of Don. Dan and Don look a lot alike but tables are lost in this confusion. Now your hostess is explaining to Don why he lost his table, he’s upset, and the host staff is dealing with a situation, not calling tables.

Open tables (no pun intended) are stacking up in the back and now that there are 6 open tables in the restaurant it will actually take longer doing it the old fashion way because you can’t just walk a single file line through a restaurant and drop people off.

That’s just one example of how this decreases wait time.

Another way that it saves wait time is the ability to text back. Say I just got in a heated discussion at the Apple store and I tell the Spaghetti Warehouse I need 20 more minutes. They can now call the next person and bump me down.

Yes, NoWait is a great name for this innovative startup. I just hope they build scale quickly because waiting sucks.

Linkage

Find out more about NoWait here.

Check out DailyDealMedia’s article here 

Here’s NoWait’s video here

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

Oh and we could REALLY use your help Click here or watch our video below!

Startup Beach House beaten up by Jersey Shore’s Reputation – Cancelled for 2012

<sarcasm font> Thanks MTV for ruining the beach </sarcasm font>

Back in May we covered the Startup Beach House – “The basic concept was to bring about 5 startup teams to the beach house for a week to see what they could build. We would then film it to document the week and what came of it.”

Originally they had leased a house in Avalon New Jersey but in their words:

In March, we secured a house in Avalon, which was perfect. After a news story ran dubbing the Startup Beach House the “Jersey Shore for geeks” (or something of that nature), which the owners of the house saw, they immediately cancelled the lease in fears of all things “Jersey Shore.”

So in April they managed to find a house in Stone Harbor, NJ.  but again ran into issues because of the Jersey Shore “reality” show.  Again, Startup Beach House explains,

Another news story came out, again making an association to the reality show “Jersey Shore.” The realtors of the initial house saw the story and sent it to the realtors of the Stone Harbor house saying something along the lines of “we wanted to make sure you are aware of what these guys are doing.” This caused alarm for the new realtor and the owners of the Stone Harbor house, they wanted to immediately cancel the lease over concerns of the type of people at the house and any filming that would take place. After explaining in detail what we were planning to do, they hesitantly agreed to rent us the house with added stipulations, however, we did not want to work in such a non-supporting environment.

They have chosen to shutter the plan for Startup Beach House 2012 because it became nearly impossible to find an appropriate unit and speaking from personal experience in South Jersey Shore vacation homes – even if they could locate a house the price would be significantly higher.  Their post explaining all of what transpired ends with:

We sincerely want to thank the hundreds of entrepreneurs and the startup community in general who have supported and promoted this effort. Also we are looking for a beach house owner or sponsor who is willing to work with us to further our goals of promoting the entrepreneurial spirit in the Philadelphia area.

We also want to thank those who have applied to be part of the inaugural Startup Beach House and encourage them to work on their ideas, even without the Startup Beach House. When we launch in 2013 we hope to have you all on board!

So there you have it.  Jersey Shore, a “reality” show that personally I feel describes (to a T) the failures of American “pop” culture, has indirectly ruined another American culture, albeit in an incredibly small physical area.  It is disheartening that 10-15 entrepreneurs and the three men behind Startup Beach House are left to deal with consequences of the actions of morons who are getting rich by dumbing down America.  I’ll leave you with this thought.

“I know he’s a nice guy … he’s gotta be clean.” – Snooki, on her friend Keith

Linkage:

Startup Beach House

Indiegogo: We’re going back on the road to spread the word about startups Everywhere Else.  We’ve got a $2 perk = Ramen or a $10 perk – Shower at a Truck Stop (Gotta be clean like Keith) – We could use your support.  If you can’t afford $2 sharing the Indiegogo campaign is still free. :)

 

background layer of image courtesy of this site

Philly’s Novotorium Hosting “Not A Hackathon” Entrepreneur Sleepover June 27 & 28th

Mike Krupit and the crew at Novotorium are holding a really cool event June 27th and 28th in Philadelphia. The event, that they’re calling the “Not a hackathon” Entrepreneur Sleepover. The event is not a “build a startup in 48 hours” type event. Rather it’s more like a weekend worth of valuable office hours to refine your startup, develop your product, work on your marketing and pick the brains of Krupit, and other great mentors.

Novotorium promises 36 straight hours of “eye popping, brain swelling, undulterated business progress”


There is a $20 participation charge which of course will cover things like fuel (food and red bull) along with other considerations. But not only that, there will be a $2,000 prize. Krupit told Nibletz.com the companies won’t do “pitches” but their progress throughout the weekend will be judged by the Novotorium and SeedPhilly team. Both Novotorium and SeedPhilly will meet with each startup individually.

The best part of the entire process is that everyone will be on hand all 36 hours, so if you’re knee deep into problem solving at 3am you’ll be able to get a mentor to help you solve your problem.

Krupit responded to criticism on the Phily Startup Leaders List Serv saying:

“We know that there are entrepreneurs are reluctant to attend hackathons or startup weekends because they don’t own what the community helps them produce. That’s why we called this a “Not-a” hackathon – to demonstrate its approach from another perspective. We added the cash prize as an incentive to those who maybe weren’t purely in it for the community, learning, and fun.

 The $20 registration is a token to basically ensure that people show up. It’s even lower than other similar events.
This model isn’t for everyone – and we never intended for it to be. There are already a number of registrants, so I’m assuming some find it interesting. For those that do, we’ll build some good business models and product, build more community, and have a good time.”
We totally get it here at nibletz, as we said the best way to describe it is 36 straight hours of office hours type access to some of the best mentors in the Philadelphia area to help any startup who registers, work on their business.
Linkage:
Find out more about this event here
Find out more about Novotorium here and Seed Philly here
This is part of Philly’s Entrepreneur Summer Camp, more here
Nibletz, the voice of startups “everywhere else” could use your support, check this out

Bethlehem PA Startup: Weather Trades Video Interview

Rarely have I found a company that deals with a force that disrupts more lives than any other issue.  Weather.  We’ve all watched the local meteorologist completely drop the ball and get it wrong.  Weather Trades, a spin-off from Weather Trends International, has a product that could change the way you live.  Seriously.

Here in the United States the typical yearly vacation time is an extremely limited two weeks.  We take huge risks when we book our travel for that short period of time.  Have you ever been to an outdoor wedding that ended up inside?  Have you ever wondered if you should keep those winter clothes out for another 6 weeks?  I have been directly or indirectly affected by each of these scenarios. If you could see a weather forecast for the next year – worldwide – with an accuracy of 80% or better how would your life be different?

Imagine you are the largest retailer in the world, and you have to decide to purchase air conditioners from the manufacturers but cannot decide whether or not to buy all of the stock or a third of it. Walmart had to make that decision:

“We bought all of the home center’s uncommitted air circulation orders from the manufacturers and had a great year.  Our sell through was 98% compared to 85% last year based solely on a huge decision we made using your year-ahead summer forecast. A $130,000,000 win in one category.” Gordon Erickson, Senior Vice President Merchandising-Hardlines

Commodities Traders:

WTI is the ONLY company in the world that provides YEAR-AHEAD forecasts that can be integrated into trading models and other business applications. WTI provides a complete suite of products and services for commodity traders, energy traders, and the entire agricultural industry. This includes typical short range-forecasting services along with proprietary year-ahead global forecasts and analytical assessments for grains, sugar, energy, and other weather driven commodity markets across the globe.

Travel Sites: After approaching the more popular travel sites on the internet and being turned down Weather Trades turned their sites on TechCrunch Disrupt to hopefully find developers, startups, and investors who can build upon the unique tools that they’ve created. In all honesty this is the startup that had me most excited.  To see a little more check out the interview by Kyle below.  I will also be reviewing their wt360 Pro app in the coming days.  It’s available in the App Store and Google Play

Find out more about Weather Trades here

Check out more of our TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 coverage here

We’re on a sneaker strapped, nationwide, startup road trip, for more on that (and to support our cause) click here

Pittsburgh Startup: Pulse Motors Expanding To Tel Aviv

Micah Toll, who graduated with a bachelor of science degree yesterday from the University of Pittsburgh, is the founder of an electric bicycle startup called Pulse Motors. Pulse Motors is based in Pittsburgh, but now with Toll graduated from college, he’s ready to expand. Rather than expand down the street, or another state over, he’s decided to expand to Tel Aviv, Israel some 6,000 miles away.

The company’s first electric bike is called the Personal Electric Vehicle Zero or PEVO. Toll, his partners Thorin Tobiassen, and Max Pless along with their fleet of beta testers in Pittsburgh have already amassed 1,000 test miles on their first prototype and Toll reports that the #2 and #3 bikes aren’t far behind.

Toll, who was named one of the top 5 college entrepreneurs by Entrepreneur Magazine, has already spent dome time in Tel Aviv. Through the Jewish Agency for Israel Toll was able to participate in a program called “Birthright” on a trip to Israel in 2011 Toll communicated with his team via video chat, which he will continue when he moves out there this summer.

More after the break
Read More…

Pennsylvania Startup: PrizeMonkey Lets You Win Free Snacks From Vending Machines

Wait free snacks? Yes free snacks!!!!  Brad Thorne, the founder of PrizeMonkey is a true startup entrepreneur and founder. He told an awesome story to the StartupAmerica partnership website.

But first lets dive into what PrizeMonkey is. As we just said, Thorne is a true #startup founder and entrepreneur, in otherwords he’s poured his heart and soul into an excellent idea and for the time being he can’t even afford snacks in a vending machine, so he created a platform that solves that problem.

PrizeMokey gamifies the vending machine. Through Thorne’s innovative technology your wi-fi enabled smartphone connects with the wi-fi enabled, and PrizeMonkey enabled snack machine. Now, instead of paying for snacks, you can play sponsored games for your chance to win free snacks. Again, for emphasis, you play games on your smartphone and instead of racking up virtual points, you can win free snacks.

You’ll be able to pick from your choice of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, Lays Potato Chips, heck even rice cakes if their in the machine. Whatever’s in the machine that’s Prize Monkey enabled can be yours for winning these games.

It’s a win-win for the end user and the game sponsor. The sponsor wants to engage the end user and what better way then with candy and snacks.

More after the break
Read More…