Seattle Archives - Page 2 of 4

Seattle Startup: XSync A Safer Way To Share Files On Mobile Devices?

Imagine if you were at a park or another public place and you snapped a shot of your child playing with another child. Perhaps you befriended the parents for just a few minutes but you don’t know them well enough to share phone numbers or email addresses. A new Seattle Startup called XSync has a solution that could work for you.

Xsync uses a QR code technology to securely link two smartphones for file transfer. Since the technology is using the QR code to establish the secured bridge, there’s no need to swap email addresses, phone numbers or Facebook accounts. Any kind of file can be sent using Xsync’s technology.

Right now there are several ways to send files between two phones, there’s NFC “bumping” like on the Galaxy Nexus phones, there’s email, SMS, Facebook, Drop Box, the bump app, and others. Is there even room for Xsync?

According to Xsync co-founder Bryan Leeds the company is already in negotiations with OEM’s and carriers to have the Xsync system pre-installed on future mobile devices. While Xsync exists in an app today, if it does go the pre-install route it would be a feature instead of an app. It would also give the startup a significant boost as they try to build scale.

Being based in Seattle could prove fruitful for this mobile centric startup. In addition to the obvious, like Microsoft, Samsung, HTC, Clearwire and T-Mobile all have significant presence in the city.

We got a chance to talk with Leeds about Xsync and growing a startup in Seattle. Check out the interview below.

Seattle Techstars Startup: SandGlaz Raises $500K

A Techstars Seattle startup graduate that specializes in collaborative project/task management has just announced a $500k raise. The startup, called SandGlaz, was founded in 2011.

SandGlaz makes it easy for high performance teams of 5-15 to manage and collaborate on tasks and projects which are managed in “infinite grids”. Users can break down task lists, add descriptions and set notifications and due dates. All this is managed through a drag and drop interface.

The funding round, led by private investors, will be used to launch more email integration, smartphone apps for Android and iOS, and launch a universal grid feature so that users can see all of their current tasks and projects on one screen.

There are already plenty of collaborative management tools out there already. Basecamp, Asana and even xtrant, offer teams of users the ability to manage tasks and projects together. However, SandGlaz CEO Nada Aldahleh, feels her startup serves the middle space between quick easy management solutions and more complex offerings like MS Project and SmartSheet.

SandGlaz seems to have all of the right things in the right places. Their revenue stream comes from their three tiered pricing plans. They offer a fermium model all the way up to team subscriptions. They also have their TechStars pedigree which definitely gives them a leg up in talking to investors.

Adlahleh spoke to BetaKit about their experience at TechStars:

“During our time at TechStars, we’ve been looking at how to improve our virality metric. I really think that virality is the key ingredient that every startup should be thinking about early on,” said Aldahleh.

Linkage

Check out SandGlaz here

Here’s more startup news from everywhere else

You need to be at the biggest startup conference in the U.S.

Life Is A Story, Tell It With Seattle Startup Jumyo

Everyday millions of people around the globe are using their smartphones, cameras, and apps to tell stories. They’re telling stories through pictures, video and of course text. Seattle startup Jumyo is helping people connect the dots and tell the stories of their lives through their social community and their iPhone app.

There are a few startups out there that are addressing the issue “if pictures could talk” by simply adding voice clips to photos sent to social networks. Jumyo knows that there is more to a story than just the picture, with or without context. Perhaps you’re at your daughters birthday party. Maybe you’re on a vacation to Mexico. What happened before these key events, what happened after? How did you get there in the first place. These are all questions that can be answered when the story is woven together.

As we put more and more pictures and videos on our phone, the ability to recall each event gets harder and harder. I travel all the time. When I visit a city I’ve been to before I often try new places but also go back to the places I really like. So at the end of the day (well actually at the end of several months) when I comb through Facebook albums, Google Plus instant upload albums and iPhoto I find pictures from the same places at different times. Sometimes it’s hard to remember why in the world I took some random photos, or videos, which at the time probably weren’t random at all.

Hopefully Jumyo can solve that problem for me and for you.

We got a chance to talk with Joe Egan, co-founder and CEO at Jumyo. Check out the interview below.

Seattle Startup Zulily’s Valuation Reaches $1 Billion Dollars

Back in September we brought you this interview with Zulily co-founder Darrell Cavens. Zulily is an online marketplace featuring daily deals for kids,mom’s and women. The company started out with just kids stuff and then expanded and started offering women’s clothing and accessories along with housewares.

It was announced on Thursday that the Seattle based startup has raised $85 million dollars from Andreessen Horowitz, one of the top valley venture capital firms that holds interests in companies like Instagram and Skype.

Jeff Jordan the former CEO of Open Table and partner at Andreessen Horowitz, characterized Zulily as an example of “e-commerce 2.0″ in a blog post. He also said that Zulily was part of a renaissance in innovation among e-commerce players.

That wasn’t all that attracted Andreessen Horowitz to Zulily. The company’s founding team that’s already had tremendous success in the e-commerce arena in a niche market. Mark Vardon and Darrell Cavens were also the team behind Blue Nile which is the largest online retailer of certified diamonds and other fine jewelry. Jordan also cited the fact that Cavens was the head of both technology and marketing, ” a combination of functions I had never encountered before as an internet executive”, he wrote in the blog post.

Zulily has been very successful in carrying goods from lesser known designers who lacked distribution and then spun it into a business with over 10 million customers to date.

Last year Zulily raised $43 million dollars at a valuation of $750 million dollars. Although they didn’t report a valuation with today’s round, Business Insider quotes Fortune’s Dan Primack valuing the company at $1 billion dollars. This puts Zulily in the same company as other startups like Square, FourSquare and Airbnb.

Linkage:

Check out Zulily here

Here’s our interview with Zulily

Source: BI

Are you coming to “everywhere else”?, you should.

Got A Truck? Make A Buck! With Seattle Startup CraigsTruck

We’re not sure how Craig Newmark is going to feel about the name of this new Seattle startup CraigsTruck, but undoubtedly hundreds of folks are going to love the service that CraigsTruck is offering.

On weekends my step father likes to make extra money. He takes his big dually pick up truck over to Home Depot, Best Buy and Lowes and offers to deliver people’s purchases to their homes for a nominal fee. Bruce makes a decent amount of money every weekend but the marketing isn’t effective and even though he’s a nice enough guy, and an honest guy, there are always people skeptical of hiring the guy in the parking lot with the truck.

That’s where Mike Hanson comes in. Hanson, the founder of CraigsTruck, has designed a service that is perfect for all the people out there like Bruce. Truck owners sign up for an account on the CraigsTruck website, and people that need a truck and a driver, can find one, just as easily as you could with Craigslist.

Whether you’re looking for someone to bring that furniture back from Ikea, or a bunch of lumber from Home Depot, CraigsTruck makes it easy.

CraigsTruck is just a platform to facilitate the peer to peer negotiation for the delivery or as Hanson refers to it Consumer to Consumer delivery.

We got a chance to talk to Hanson. Check out the interview below.

Seattle Startup: WompMobile Promises Easy Web To Mobile Conversion

One of the most frustrating things for some web publishers is exactly how they’re going to get their sites onto mobile devices. Some choose to go with a native mobile app, meaning that a mobile app is created for each smartphone platform from scratch for the site. Others choose to use WordPress plugins or other competing platforms. We’re fortunate that our site scales to mobile nicely.

Seattle startup WompMobile is hoping to make the process much easier for their web publishing clients. WompMobile uses their own proprietary design engine to scale a desktop website to mobile maintaining the integrity of the desktop design. They promise to make “going mobile easy”.

While their process takes just under ten days, once the WompMobile team has run your website through their engine, every update the publisher makes to their website is instantly updated on the mobile version.

Madison Miner the company’s founder, says that their secret sauce is in their conversion engine. Things like fonts, styles, and branding remain consistent from web to mobile and the publisher doesn’t need to sacrifice their web presence by using a generic mobile format.

We got a chance to talk to Miner about WompMobile and the Seattle startup scene in the interview below.

Seattle Startup Bibo Launches Social Drinking Beta App

There are very few areas where the phrase “There’s an app for that” doesn’t apply. The social drinking space is starting to produce a whole new crop of apps. On nibletz.com alone we’ve featured Wisconsin based startup Trinker, New York startup Drynk.me, Pittsburgh startup Grail, Baltimore startup BeerGivr, and Oklahoma startup Drink Easy.

Each one of these startups addresses social drinking in a different way. A few of them are about buying a buddy a drink either in person and charging it to your phone, or from afar. Some are about taking pictures of drinks and sharing them, while others are more like mobile based wine lists.

Seattle startup Bibo is hoping to become the social discovery platform for drinks. Their new iPhone app allows users to rate, and share beverages socially. It also allows you to search for drinks based on your physical location. Now you don’t have to walk into a strange bar or restaurant just to find out if they have your favorite craft beer or mixed drink. Bibo solves that for you in the palm of your hand.

Similarly to Drynk.me, Bibo wants to become the largest location based picture database of drinks in the world. The platform works in reverse as well. Say you go into a bar that you like for ambience and atmosphere but the bartender there doesn’t do your favorite cocktail. Well with Bibo you can show the bartender how to make that drink that will keep you coming back.

The co-founders of Bibo are no strangers to discovery. Natan Antolin, Mac McClian, Steve Jacobson met in late 2011 while working for a job search platform.

Bibo works with local bars, lounges, night clubs and restaurants to procure all of their drink data. From there restaurants and bars can be featured based on the drinks they serve.

At this point in time the drink space is anyones game. We’ll see if Bibo can bring it.

Linkage:

Check out Bibo here

Here are more startup news stories from nibletz, the voice of startups “everywhere else”

A conference wouldn’t be a conference without some good parties, click here

Keep An SOS In Your Pocket With Seattle Startup React Mobile INTERVIEW

In this day and age personal safety is a very important issue to many people. There are a million different factors that play into a persons personal safety. Did you just get attacked by someone? Are you feeling unsafe because someone is following you? Are you diabetic and feeling light headed? Are you allergic to bees and just got stung?

Any of these situations, and countless others, could result in the need to make a distress call to someone, and time is almost always of the essence. Well Robb Monkman and Grant Wallace, two Seattle based entrepreneurs with backgrounds in safety and communication have created a startup called React Mobile. React Mobile functions as a distress or SOS signal right in your pocket.

With React Mobile both Monkman and Wallace figured out that the best safety device, and distress signal device was already in most people’s pockets. Of course that device is their smartphone. React Mobile is an iOS and Android app with three distinct safety abilities; alerting via email, text and social networks; GPS location sharing; and emergency reporting.

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

Startup Washington Launches To A Full House

In the past week we’ve seen two new state regions join the Startup America Partnership, a nationwide organization for entrepreneurs and founders of high growth potential startups. The organization provides over 90 member benefits to it’s almost 10,000 member base. Startup America was implemented last year under the Obama administration. AOL Founder and Revolution Founder serves as Chairman of the Startup America board. Scott Case (no relation), the founding CTO of Priceline.com serves as the organizations CEO and national spokersperson.

On September 6th a large and diverse group of Washington State entrepreneurs, innovators, founders and startups gathered at the Intiman Playhouse for the Next 50 Commerce & Innovation Economy Month event alongside the launch of Startup Washington. The event itself sold out in less than two weeks and had over 300 people in attendance. The launch event featured short remarks from Wash. Secretary of Commerce Rogers Weed, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, and Startup America national co-founder Pam Contag.

Seattle is a hotbed of innovative startup and entrepreneurial activity in present day and over the past 25 years. The Seattle region plays home to Microsoft, Amazon.com, T-Mobile USA, HTC USA and countless other companies that have driven innovation in mobile and internet over the last 20 years. Seattle also has an incredible local startup and tech website, geekwire.com. In the current wave of startups, StartupWeekend and Microsoft BizSpark are both driving forces behind national innovation and both are also headquartered in Washington state.

Rashmir Balasubramaniam, Founder of Nsansa and MC for the evening, connected and elevated attendees with a playful and engaging tone for the evening.

“Washington State is a melting pot of innovation, entrepreneurship and conscious leadership. Our unique set of industries, ideas, and intentions are coming together to ensure that our people and our environment thrive,” said Balasubramaniam.

“All of us on the Startup Washington team were thrilled to see such an incredible response to this event. We are more excited than ever about celebrating innovation and entrepreneurship in Washington State, and anticipate another 50 years of innovation and entrepreneurial success stories from our region,” noted Lindsay Andreotti, CEO, Brilliance Enterprises and Co-Chair of Startup Washington.

Linkage:

Check out StartupWashington.org here

Check out Startup America here at S.co

Startups “everyhwhere else” check out “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” here

Seattle Startup: Zulily, Daily Deals For Kids INTERVIEW

(photo: Zulily/people.com)

So what do two men who have entrepreneurial and technology backgrounds do when they become dads? Create a startup of course. That’s what Darrell Cavens and Mark Vadon have done with Zulily. Zulily is an online marketplace that offers daily deals on stuff for kids.

Zulily offers a variety of products for any kid ages 0-8 and of course starts off with maternity needs for expectant mothers. With their daily deals, parents can save up to 90% on things that they really need for their kids.

A site like Zulily is a recipe for success. Just how successful? Zulily grew so fast last year that Cavens told Xconomy back in May that their backlog of orders was over 300,000 units deep “So we sat down in August of last year and said, `Oh shit—we’re in a world of hurt,’” Cavens told Xconomy. In June Zulily topped Seattle’s list of hottest startups, edging out StartupWeekend, Big Fish Games and even SEOmoz, which powers Zulily.

Zulily already has over 5 million email subscribers that get their deals everyday. They employ over 300 people and add 5,000 products to their private sale site daily. Zulily keeps stock of products in house, which is a definite change from the way that most daily deals sites work. Those sites, when dealing in hard goods, drop ship merchandise via the manufacturer or vendor.

This ride for Cavens and Vadon is so wild that it’s hard to believe we were able to get a chance to talk with a spokesperson from Zulily. Check out our interview below:

Seattle Startup: TangoCard Announces Salesforce Integration

Imagine if you could integrate actual gift giving into your Salesforce CRM system. Go beyond birthday and anniversary reminders and actually send a gift. That’s now a reality thanks to Seattle based startup TangoCard.

Salesforce integration for the Eric Schmidt, Innovation Endeavors, backed startup is just one on the features TangoCard has been working on this summer.

Once the user installs the TangoCard for Salesforce app, giving a contact a gift is as easy as finding that contacts name and hitting a button.

After installing the free app, just look up a contact or lead, choose a card, write a message, and hit send. Gift card options include the Tango Card as well as digitally delivered gift cards from major retail brands including Starbucks and Fandango. Through a partnership with Treat, sending a beautiful physical greeting card also becomes as simple as sending an email. Additionally there is “zero-click” integration with Concur Technologies. For any purchase made with a linked Concur® account, a receipt image for any purchase is posted directly to an open Concur expense report. This integration finally creates a simple way to properly expense and account for enterprise gift card purchases.

Now there’s no excuse to miss a present or for forgetting a follow up gift.

“Sales teams, customer service teams, recruiters, and others spend over $10 billion annually on gift cards, and many of these teams also use huge SaaS platforms like Salesforce,” says David Leeds, CEO and Founder of Tango Card. “We created this dedicated Salesforce app to dramatically simplify the process of buying a gift card. Perhaps more importantly, doing this through Salesforce empowers teams with great business intelligence and real power to follow-up on cards they have sent. It also provides a slick way to complete holiday gift card purchases.”

TangoCard announced a partnership with Denver startup Plink, to widen the reward choices for their platform which prior to that, dealt only in Facebook credits. Both companies announced that partnership in June.

Last month, TangoCard announced a partnership with Portland startup Hively to reward employees for great customer service.

While the SalesForce announcement is quite exciting we’ve got it from a good source that TangoCard will have even more news between now and the end of the year.

Linkage:

Check out TangoCard here

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

We need the startup community’s support!

Seattle Startup: Hark Is The World’s Repository For Pop Culture Sound Bytes

Do you remember back in the day, the plethora of .wav based geocities sound bite repositories. We’re talking low budget, bad wav file audio from a handful of movies. No? Good because that’s not Hark.

Hark is the world’s repository for pop culture soundbytes. The best movies in the world, and even the hard to find treasures, have sound bites on Hark’s platform at hark.com. Everyone loves a great movie quote from “You can’t handle the truth” to the recent “You didn’t build that” quote from Obama, to “Do you want to play a game” the War Games sound bite that started it all. Hark is the one place to go to hear those soundbytes, embed those sound bites and download those sound bites.

All of this is legal as well. Rather than trying to dodge the movie studios, producers, and tv producers, Hark went with their best foot forward and showed how their website can promote movies, tv shows and other places where great sound bites originate. Through Hark, some of the best sound bites in pop culture and current events have quickly been able to go viral, and what movie studio doesn’t want a viral movie quote.

Hark has partnered with 5 major film studios including Paramount, Universal,Lionsgate and Warner Brothers, to offer over 3 million sound bites from popular movies, tv shows,video games, sporting events,and political speeches.

We got a chance to interview Hark. Check out the interview below:

Founder Institute Introduces Mentor Mondays In Seattle

The Founder Institute, the largest idea stage accelerator in the world is starting a new initiative in Seattle to connect startups and entrepreneurs with great mentors.

Mentor Mondays cost a very modest $5.00 fee and give early stage startups, entrepreneurs and anyone with an idea access to a large mentor base of the regions top mentors. Founder Institute has over 60 successful founders and CEO’s that are there to support the startup ecosystem in Washington.

The lunch meetings are BYOL (Bring Your Own Lunch) but no worries there are over a dozen food trucks a stone throw from the venue in South Lake Union. The hour long schedule is stacked tightly:

12:00-12:15 Lunch and casual conversation
12:15-12:30 Mentor Topic
12:30-12:45 Q&A
12:45-1:00 Mentor 1:1 meetings

It’s kind of like mentor speed dating but the access opportunity for just $5.00 is incredible. Of course when you go into Mentor Mondays with a great idea, passion, drive and a plan you’ll probably get to spend a lot more than just 15 minutes 1:1 with the mentors.

Mentor Mondays start Monday August 20th and you can register here.

These are the same caliber mentors that Founder Institute is known for and that several have paid hundreds of dollars to get access to. In Seattle, for Mentor Mondays it’s just $5.00 (and the cost of your food at the food trucks if you so desire)

Linkage:

Source: StartupSeattle.com

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

Seattle Startup: PlayMySurvey Makes Napalm Smell Better In The Morning INTERVIEW

If you’re wondering about the headline Seattle Startup: PlayMySurvey Makes Napalm Smell Better In The Morning, and you’re thinking that PlayMySurvey has to do with survey’s you’re actually right. However, in a light hearted interview with the Seattle based startup that was their first answer to what their company does.

Naturally, their real mission is clearly identified in the name. They make important survey’s more fun to complete by gamifying the survey system.

If Seattle makes you think of Mike Arrington, rain and metal and grunge music, then you’re not too far off. Derek, the co-founder of PlayMySurvey used to play bass for a pretty established regional heavy metal band called Hirmsa. Now he works a day job and has 99 other jobs (but the b*tch ain’t one, oh wait that’s problems), in running PlayMySurvey. He assures us though, like any good company, he has an Indian man doing all the grunt work for half the pay, but his man is actually in Washington State and not coding PlayMySurvey in between customer service calls for some big wireless company out of a Mumbai call center.

If you can tell from our lead in PlayMySurvey takes very important work and makes it a lot more fun. Not just by the duo’s great attitude in building a startup but by adding games and engaging designs into the questions themselves. According to Derek, there are a lot of survey companies and a lot of casual game companies in the Seattle and Redmond area. There’s a huge company in Redmond that not many take seriously these days. Roll that all into one and you have PlayMySurvey.

Check out our interview below