College Students Are Being Robbed Of Millions Of Dollars, Startup PackBack Will Help

If you read the headline and think this is another boring story about college loans and tuition costs, you’re dead wrong. College students are being robbed of millions of dollars in a way that’s much more prevalent today then when many of us were college age. The culprit? Textbooks.

We met Mike Shannon and Kasey Gandham at Chicago TechWeek where they were showing off their startup PackBack. After spending a few minutes with them, I realized this whole “college students are being robbed, and PackBack can help” thing is no B.S. Shannon and Gandham both had textbooks that they would purchase at the beginning of the year for hundreds of dollars. Those books then stayed in the orange shipping boxes on move out day. Never even touched.

Shannon explained “Even in education technology and news is moving so fast that textbooks can be outdated on the first day of classes.” Professors have resorted to more up-to-date curriculum aids like the Internet, news articles, PowerPoint presentations, and speakers. Through his four years of college, Shannon said he may have up to 10 books that he purchased that were never even opened.

That can add up. It’s another cost factored into those mounting student loans.

So what does PackBack do? They are a short-term rental company for student textbooks. In most cases you rent the book by the day. This way if a professor surprises his or her students by actually having them do a textbook assignment, students can get access to the textbook relatively quickly.

Gandham and Shannon are testing out a model in the neighborhood of $5 per day for the text book rental. As they explain it, even if the professor resorts to the book 10 times over the course of a year, the student is saving anywhere from $50 to $100 off the cheapest used version of most books.

This startup simply makes ~~sense~~ cents.

Check out our interview with Shannon and Gandham below and check out PackBackbooks.com

Here are more amazing startups from Chicago TechWeek

1776 Goes Global On Multiple Startup Fronts

1776, Startup News, DC Startups, Donna Harris, Evan Burfield

Donna Harris, co-founder of 1776dc chatting with an entrepreneur (photo: NMI 2013)

1776, the startup, entrepreneurial and tech campus that serves as the epicenter for Washington DC’s tech and startup community, announced new initiatives which take their programming, and core, to a global audience. Founded by two Washington DC entrepreneurs, Donna Harris and Evan Burfield, the co-working, incubator, accelerator, co-working and event space has been packed full with startup activity since they opened. One of 1776’s biggest fans is DC Mayor Vince Gray.\

“We’ve wanted to pursue global initiatives since Day 1,” says Donna Harris, cofounder of 1776. “1776 is a fantastic resource for startups in D.C. It [could also be] a fantastic resource for any startup in the world.”

1776 has announced three main global initiatives; a virtual membership program, similar to the program in DC, and Startup Federation, an initiative that will help other cities, globally, prepare their own 1776 counterparts. The final piece of the global initiatives launched this week is the “Global Challenge Cup”.

The Global Challenge cup is an NCAA final four style tournament. Startups from 16 cities (DC, New York Boston, Chicago, Austin, Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Berlin, Moscow, Capetown, Tel Aviv, Mumbai, Beijing and Sao Paolo. Each city’s startups will compete in one of the following categories; health, education, energy and metropolitan challenges. The finalists from each city and each category will come to Washington DC next May to compete amidst a big week long festival that 1776 is hosting, according to elevationdc.com

The Global Challenge Cup is being backed by $180,000 from The Office of The Deputy Mayor For Planning and Economic Development. Burfield also reported to ElevationDC that they have more strategic partnerships to announce.

The virtual membership program will allow startups located outside Washington DC to have access to the 1776 community. In addition to serving as DC’s tech and startup hub, 1776 can help other startups get access to the Federal Government, the largest “enterprise customer” in the country.

Prior to founding 1776 Burfield was the Washington DC Regional Champion for Startup America and the founder of that region. Harris, was a director with Startup America. They see the virtual membership and federation initiatives as ways to continue sharing and collaborating with similar startup communities across the country and around the world.

You can find out more at 1776dc.com

Source: elevationDC

Hungarian Startup Brickflow Curates Stories, Easily, Through Your Social Media

Stringing together content to tell a story isn’t anything new, but the tools we are using these days to tell stories are getting newer every day. A big story is now told through a series of smaller stories, typically in 15 second videos, 6 second videos or 140 characters or less. Yes I’m speaking of Twitter, Vine, and the new Instagram with video.

There are a lot of people telling stories through Vine. We’ve even used Vine to do six second startup pitches. Now, with video on Instagram people are using that as a tool. In fact New York investor, and wine aficionado Gary Vaynerchuck has started an agency representing the best of the micro-videoers.

But what about the millions of others who want to make something more than just a few microbursts and updates? People would surely love to use their content to tell stories on a grander scale, right?

That’s what Hungarian startup (yes there are startups in Hungary), Brickflow is doing with social media. They hope to open their playful story creation tool up for global public beta later this month. We got a chance to talk with Mihaly Borbely, one of the cofounders of Brickflow. Check out the interview below.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

Brickflow has three founders.

Mihaly Borbely has a background in market research, and also has experience in photography and web technologies. Peter Langmar has a background in photography, but changed his track and studied business and communications. He researched the impact of social media on our cultural behaviour and worked for a Harvard University founded startup incubator in Paris. Tamas Kokeny has worked as a developer for years and participated in the development of sites like Superglued before he joined Brickflow. He gained key experience at the well-recognized Hungarian startup, Prezi.

Where are you based?

We are from Budapest, Hungary, but we’ve been living in several places over the last one year. As startup founders we have to be flexible and ready to move anywhere, if an opportunity arises. We moved to Tallinn, Estonia, to join the Startup Wise Guys accelerator. Currently we are working in Santiago, as part of the Start-Up Chile program. We’ll stay here until September, then we’ll move back to Europe. Our future goal is to focus our business development and marketing efforts to the US.

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

Estonia is a great place to be for startups. Innovation seems to be deeply rooted in the everyday life of the country. There’s an active startup scene in Tallinn, with lots of events going on. Being in Santiago is also an awesome experience, since we work together with a huge community of Start-Up Chile participants from all over the world. But our home city, Budapest is awakening and also has its own startup community, which is growing at a speed we’ve never seen before. Each place has its own strengths.

What problem do you solve?

There is no tool for playful curated storytelling:

Curation tools only let you create just another linear feed. Storytelling tools are too complicated. If bloggers want to add a visual narrative to a post, they have no easy way to do it. There is no way to connect short videos as a story, or present content from different sources as one coherent visual narrative.

Why now?

Curated storytelling is a form of communication that is here to stay. But content is getting shorter, more visual, and taking place in real-time. Hashtags are becoming mainstream. Vine and Instagram are widely popular. This is a totally new form of self-expression: a few seconds of square-shaped video, low-res snapshots, 140 characters of text.

The tool which connects these sources into curated stories must have a format, workflow, and user experience that fit perfectly into this new world. Nobody else on the market is focusing on visual storytelling with such an approach. Moreover, we aggregate social media content based on hashtag, which makes the workflow much more simple.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

We started with a successful crowdfunding campaign, been through the Startup Wise Guys accelerator, and the Startup Chile program. We are currently in private Beta, but our early adopters already made thousands of stories with Brickflow. We already have paying customers as well, using Brickflow for marketing purposes.

What are your next milestones?

The public Beta will be launched in July.

We are raising $250.000 seed investment, for which we already have 75% in soft commitments, but of course we are still looking for potential investors.

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

Brickflow can be found on any of the following platforms:

facebook.com/brickflow twitter.com/brickflow blog.brickflow.com

Startup America goes global with UP Global

Cheek’d Is Reinventing Online Dating [video]

Do you remember when online dating was a bad thing? You know, you met someone online, but you wouldn’t dare tell your parents or your closest friends. Instead, the story was you just happened to meet the most wonderful woman (or man) in the world, who lives 500 miles away, by accident? Now online dating is the norm, especially for busy people.

Sites like match.com have been around since the mid 90’s, e-harmony since 2000. There are of course hundreds of apps to help you find the next perfect match, online.

Well, a startup we reported on last October, is turning online dating on its head by adding an offline component, the calling card. Cheek’d gets its name, not from dancing cheek-to-cheek or anything romantic like that, but from its founder: Lori Cheek. Cheek told us in an interview that the idea came about when she was out to dinner with a dear male friend. As they were leaving the restaurant the male friend of hers wrote his name and number on the back of a card and slipped it to an attractive woman. Sparks went off in Cheek’s head, and Cheek’d was born.

Cheek’d lets you order Cheek’d cards that have a link to your Cheek’d profile. Typically in online dating you spend a while courting someone online and then meeting in person. Now you can take that first impression and back it with a robust online platform.

Is it working? Cheek’d told us at Chicago TechWeek that they have thousands of users from across the globe who’ve started using the service. “Cheek’d bridges the gap between online dating and real-world romance by providing members with physical cards that they can use to entice people from the real world to flirt with them in the virtual world. It’s the 2.0 version of “Call Me.” Cheek told Nibletz.

Cheek’d is a really interesting twist in online dating. Check out our interview video below and to sign up visit cheekd.com

See more startup coverage from Chicago Techweek here.

Not Even Arson Could Stop This Startup For Autistic Children From Winning $100,000 In Nevada Contest

Sport-Social, Las Vegas Startup, Autism, Startup Contest

Autistic campers at sport-social enjoy the skateboard ramps during summer camp (photo: lasvegasautism.com)

Sport-Social is an off-line startup founded by 22-year-old therapist for autistic children, Andrew Devitt. Devitt created Sport-Social, a recreation/fun center of sorts, specifically for children with autism, offering therapy through sports, fun, and group activities. The goal is to teach autistic children social skills through sports, games and the arts.

Last month, The Nevada Institute For Renewable Energy Commercialization held Project Vesto a startup contest with a $100,000 prize for startups across the state. The contest received over 230 entrants, and polling was done online.

Sport-Social was selected as the grand prize winner out of all the entrants. They will receive $25,000 in seed money and must hit milestones in order to receive the rest of the prize money.

While this story has a very very positive outcome, it didn’t look that way a couple of months ago. Back in May an arsonist set fire to the facility causing over $80,000 in damages, the worst nightmare for an already bootstrapped startup. Sport-Social’s employees worked around the clock to partially open up the facility a week later so the over 250 children that benefit from it’s programming.

The Las Vegas Sun reports that when Devitt woke up on Monday, April, 18th his phone was filled with voicemail messages from neighboring businesses and his alarm company. When he first heard the news that Sport-Social had a major fire he didn’t quite comprehend. When he arrived at the location he found out that seven fires had been set and that the prize closet and equipment for the children had been ruined. 24-year-old Samuel Powers, who used to work for an agency that collaborated with Sport-Social, was arrested for setting the fires.

Overcoming the tragedy, rebuilding, and pressing on led the company to the win the contest which will help the rebuilding efforts.

Despite the fire and rebuilding, Sport-Social will benefit from the program in other ways, namely mentorship and guidance on preparing the business to continue to grow in Nevada.

“For startup companies like Sport-Social, it is extremely important to couple hands-on mentorship with seed capital to help ensure their success,” Ian Rogoff, Chairman of the Board of NIREC said in a statement. Through Project Vesto, Sport-Social will gain access to a distinguished network of angel investors, experienced entrepreneurs, and consultants who will work hands-on with Sport-Social over the coming months to take their business concept to the next level. “We look forward to helping Sport-Social become an even bigger success story for Nevada than it already is,” says Rogoff.

You can find out more about the Project Vesto here and about Sport-Social here.

Check out this Pittsburgh startup PopChilla that created a robot for autistic children.

Startupland: The Movie, Chronicling Real Life In A Top Metropolitan (everywhere else) Accelerator

Justin Gutwein is a film maker and startup junkie who has combined his love of entrepreneurship and startups with his love of filmmaking with a little help from the most recent graduating class at Fortify.vc.

Gutwein has taken to Kickstarter to fund the post production and finishing costs of the Startupland documentary series. Startupland chronicles the lives of LegCyte, RidePost, SnobSwap, TrendPro, and TripTribe, who were all part of the spring cohort at Washington, DC’s “The Fort” accelerator, led by Jonathon Perrelli.

There have been a few spins on a “startup series.” Techstars did a series with Bloomberg that was great for entrepreneurs, but it looked more at the program and the program’s founders. Then there was that Randi Zuckerberg mess that didn’t really relate to any startup founders. What makes Startupland different, and necessary, is all the raw footage that Gutwein shot. None of it was scripted or orchestrated, aside from editing each episode for time, and to capture the story. It’s a real look at what an accelerator is like.

“JP [Jonathon Perelli] didn’t even want to be in the movie. He let me have full access to the startups and the program, but Startupland is about the startups and the stories are told by the startups themselves,” Gutwein told us in a phone interview.

Gutwein has a goal to have the post production done by the fall, just in time for–oh wait you’ll have to find out about that later this month! To get there he’s looking to raise $75,000 on Kickstarter. At the time this article was written, Gutwein had already had $25,000 pledged.

Startupland is going to be good for anyone involved in startups. For the beginner it will provide a good look into what it really takes to get into an accelerator program. For a startup in acceleration to seed or series A, it will show that every startup goes through similar issues. For the hardened veteran it will be both entertaining and educational.

Check out the rest of our interview with Gutwein below:

What is your startup called?

Startupland

What does your company do?

Startupland is a documentary series that weaves together the stories of five early stage companies in an accelerator together with interviews and advice from seasoned, veteran entrepreneurs.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds

Justin Gutwein is the Producer / Director. He is the founder of ShineOn Storytelling and has produced numerous documentary projects including The Entrepreneurial Spirt and the video content for Creating Innovators.

Where are you based?

DC

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

It’s energized, growing and supportive…you’ll have to watch to find out the rest!

What problem are you hoping to solve by releasing Startup Land?

The vision is to inspire and educate entrepreneurs globally on the ins and outs, ups and downs, successes and failures of starting and building a company and provide an accelerator-like experience to those who may not have access to an accelerator.

Why now?

With new accelerators sprouting up all over the world, it seemed the right time to capture what happens at an experienced one to teach those that may not have access.

How much have you completed already?

Five companies have been documented going through an entire accelerator course. Hundreds of hours of footage have been shot. The storylines that will be the backbone of the series are being developed and fleshed out.

What are your next steps?

We are in the final stages of confirming some legends of tech and venture capital to be interviewed for the series. We are also working on developing graphics and animations to help breakdown some of the more complicated topics, like the ins and outs of cap tables, the many methods for leveraging stock as a currency and sourcing tech talent.

Where can people find out more?

Back StartupLand on Kickstarter here. find out more at startupland.tv

This is an absolute must attend startup conference for any startup everywhere else.

Knight Foundation Refreshes Miami Startup Community With $150K For Refresh Miami

Refresh Miami, an organization that supports startups and entrepreneurship in Miami, has been connecting entrepreneurs to each other, growth capital, and resources since 2005, since before it was “cool”. The 5,000 member organization has held over 1000 events since it’s inception 8 years ago, according to Florida Technology Journal.

Now the organization is the recipient of $150,000 from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Knight Foundation is a philantrhopic cousin to the Knight Ridder newspaper family. They often support startups and startup communities, especially in the areas of media.

That’s where this funding will come in handy. Refresh Miami is looking to revamp its web offerings by generating more content for entrepreneurs, founders, and investors. They’re also looking to connect their user base to a an event calendar, job listings, and even member profiles.

“Its great to be a part of the growing climate for innovation in Miami, and we hope to contribute more with this support from the Knight Foundation,” said Brian Breslin, Refresh Miami founder and co-director.

“Through this expansion Refresh can continue on its mission of growing and refreshing the technology and entrepreneurial community in the city,” said Peter Martinez, Refresh Miami co-director.

“Miami’s start-up ecosystem continues to gain momentum, but people need the right connections and a central place for ways to learn and engage in the community,” said Matt Haggman, Miami program director for Knight Foundation. “Refresh Miami will fill this gap by providing entrepreneurs with the opportunities they need to build their ideas and inspire others to participate.”

Find out more about Refresh Miami.

Steve Case Re-Affirms Faith In Startups, Raising Another $150 Million Dollar Fund

Washington, DC-based Steve Case, founder of AOL, Revolution, and the founding Chairman of Startup America, has made some bold moves over the past few years when it comes to startups. He’s also been a strong advocate for startups everywhere across the nation and on Capitol Hill.

Monday, Case put his money where his mouth is again by announcing through TechCrunch. The AOL-owned website reports that through his venture capital arm, Revolution Ventures, Case and partners are raising another $150 million dollar fund to support early stage startup ventures.

Revolution is calling the fund “Revolution Ventures II,” and like the previous fund, it will back early stage tech companies. Some of their previous portfolio companies include ZipCar, Living Social, and HomeSnap.

TechCrunch also reported that they’ve heard $125 million was already committed.

Two and a half years ago Case launched Startup America, a three-year initiative to spur startups, innovation, and job creation. Two months ago Case, along with several others, announced that Statup America was joining forces with Startup Weekend to take the initiatives global. Now we know that Case wants to continue to do his part directly by launching more companies.

The Need To Get His School Life Organized Sparks Young Entrepreneur’s Semester Planner

Marcell Purham always knew he wanted to start something. He started coding and developing a little over 7 years ago when he was just 13 years old. His love of developing started with easy stuff like helping his friends code their MySpace pages. As time went on he got more and more into design and learning every language he could. Purham is the kind of guy that soaks up knowledge from wherever he can get it, so he attends as many startup events in Chicago as he can and spends his freetime reading up on everything in the tech and startup world.

Now a college student, Purham quickly realized that his brain was overflowing with information, which made it really hard for him to stay focused and organized in school. That’s why he created Semester Planner. “Think Online Trapper Keeper,” Purham told Nibletz in an interview. (Is he even old enough to remember the Trapper Keeper?)

Semester Planner is a student planning app that captures everything in a student’s academic life, including notes, class schedule, calendar, and more. It organizes all the information in an easy-to-recall platform that keeps everything by semester. It also makes it really easy to find things later.

We got a chance to talk with Purham. Check out our text and video interviews with Purham below.

What is your startup called?

Semester Planner.

What does your company do?

Semester Planner is a free online planner that helps students keep track of their notes, classes, assignments, and documents.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds

There is only one founder and his name is Marcell Purham. Marcell is a software developer with 7+ years of developing for web. He started out at 13 learning to code and writing code for friends on myspace then took it to the next level by moving onto design and finally programming.

Where are you based?

We are based in Chicago, IL.

What problem do you solve?

The problem we’re solve are allowing students to access their notes, assignments, documents, and classes on the go or while they’re in school.

Why now?

Honestly as a student myself I needed something to help me keep track of all my semester classes, notes, assignments etc. So as I took on more classes I did not want to carry around all those heavy textbooks and finally decided to solve that problem, for not only myself but also for other students.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

We’ve achieved a lot within the first 6 months(Launched in January 2013). Over 100 students from my community college signed up and used it for their semester and also some kids from others schools. We’ve had over 2,000 chrome downloads for semester planner and our likes on Facebook are constantly going up.

What are your next milestones?

Right now I am working on the Android version of the application and hope to release it sometime this year to students and I am talking with a friend on getting this developed for iOS also so that what we’re up to for now. Also we’re getting feedback from users and seeing if they’re things they love about the site and hate so that becomes very useful to us.

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

If you would like to learn more about semester planner check it out on our website, Facebook or twitter.

Twitter – http://twitter.com/semesterplanner

facebook – https://www.facebook.com/semesterplanner

Semester Planner – https://semesterplanner.com

Now check out our video interview with Purham

We’ve got more Chicago TechWeek coverage than any other source, check it out here.

A Must Attend Conference For Startups Everywhere Else, Early Bird Discounts Going Away

The inaugural “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” was heralded by forbes.com as a “Must attend” This one of a kind conference caters to the collective trials, problems and victories unique to startups “everywhere else”, giving founders from anywhere USA access to the kind of conference that typically costs thousands of dollars to attend.

The first conference, held February 10-12th in Memphis Tennessee was attended by over 1200 attendees from 43 states, 7 countries and 3 continents with over 75 startups in the startup village from an equally large footprint across the country, and around the world. Attendees were treated to keynotes, workshops, networking, pitch contests and three great after party events.

On day one all of the attendees went together to the Memphis Grizzlies vs Minnesota Timberwolves game. The other, overflowing parties included one at the world famous Ernestine and Hazels (a brothel over 30 years ago) and Raiford’s a one of a kind discotech djed by an old man with a cape that brought the house down. Far and wide people are still talking about that party.

We’ve got some amazing things lined up for our next Memphis conference February 17-19 2014 and an even bigger announcement at the end of July (stay tuned).

We have longer sessions, even better content, catered breakfast and lunch sessions, learning sessions on marketing, branding, startup accounting and legal issues and much more. Mike Muhney the godfater of CRM and founder of ACT, Gary Swart, CEO of oDesk, Jonathon Perrelli, Danny Boice, several 500 Startups founders, YCombinator Founders and Techstars founders and many more have already committed to the next conference and we’ll have a bunch more announcements in the coming weeks.

With that in mind you want to act now and get your attendee tickets or startup village booth during the early bird discount period where you can get tickets to the next conference (and startup village booths) at the same rate as last year. Attendee discounted tickets are $59 and Startup Village booths (including 3 tickets) just $395. These discounts absolutely end July 6.

Startup Village booths get:

3 conference passes for your team. Exhibitors will have the same access as paid attendees to everything found here
Tickets to all of our after conference events
pitch contests
8×10 exhibit booth space
6 foot table
Description in our professionally printed program
Description on the everywhereelse.co website (startups will be posted starting October 15)
Early access on to set up and late access to take down
Yes you can purchase extra tickets for team members beyond the initial three tickets. Those “exhibitor guest” tickets are only $50
Can we sell stuff at our booth YES
Can we demo our app at our booth YES
Just so we’re clear if your team is 3 people or less, you DO NOT need to buy additional attendee tickets.
We do ask that your booth is manned by at least one human being from your team during all exhibition hours but feel free to rotate that human and enjoy the rest of the event.

I’m Up All Night To GetLusty, Check Out This Chicago Startup

“End Boring Sex”

That’s the motto of Chicago startup GetLusty. GetLusty is an online platform geared towards married couples and couples in long term relationships. “Sometimes the lust just runs out, and you’re still very much in love,” founder Erica Grigg told us at Chicago TechWeek.

Grigg, who previously founded a digital agency, started GetLusty after the lust in her marriage died out. She’s not ashamed to let people know that her and her husband’s sex life had become repetitive and it was the same thing every time.

The Ladies Home Journal reports that Grigg’s sex life dried up because she and her husband couldn’t communicate properly about it. “She was too nervous to explore what turned her on, and her husband was equally dudly (not studly) in his inability to reassure and encourage her,” wrote Amy Keyishian writer for the Ladies Home Journal.

GetLusty is a well thought out, professional web platform. It features over 800 articles on how to improve your sex life. They also have a marketplace with hand selected merchants and a guide to curated, safe events. Nothing about the GetLusty website screams PORN. The content focuses on areas like: getting better sexual technique, improving communication, date more and date better, increasing adventure and staying healthy.

Grigg is adamant about GetLusty being about couples, to help couples improve their sex lives.

The company launched into beta just in time for Valentine’s Day this year. They were one of 70 startups featured in StarutpCity at Chicago TechWeek. Check out our video interview with Grigg below. Ready to end boring sex? Go to getlusty.com

Check out some more startups from Chicago TechWeek

Steve Case: Passing Immigration Legislation Victory For Startups

While Nibletz isn’t going to pontificate on the southern border issue in the United States, the recently passed Senate Immigration Bill is solving a huge problem for startups. One that the likes of Steve Case, Scott Case, Marc Nager, Brad Feld, and others have been championing.

In the most basic of laymen’s terms, it’s somewhat easy for a foreigner to come to America, attend an accelerator, get funding for their company, and go home. It gets rocky when they want to stay and build their company in America, one of the reasons Startup America and other organizations are even around.

It’s also somewhat easy for a sharp foreigner to come and work for Google, Microsoft, or Facebook, but when they have that great idea and want to build their startup in the U.S. things get a lot more dicey.

The new immigration legislation includes “startup visas” that according to The Washington Post, will “allow entrepreneurs from around the world to start firms and create jobs.”

Earlier this year at SXSW Steve Case and Scott Case (no relation) spent a lot of time celebrating startups across the country. However at Startup America’s huge SXSW party, Steve Case took to the stage to talk about immigration and how we needed this reform in order to help spur innovation from great minds who, in most cases, have come over to the United States and seen what they can do here.

Steve Case told The Washington Post: “This important step demonstrates the capacity of our elected leaders in Washington to come together across party lines to advance what is clearly in our nation’s best interest – an immigration system that meets the needs of our 21st century economy. The Senate’s bill will attract the world’s best entrepreneurs and innovators and be a key ingredient to sustaining America’s long-term competitive edge.”

Steve Case, the founder of AOL and Revolution has done some major lobbying on Capitol Hill over the past 4 years to help spur entrepreneurship and innovation across the country. He is the founding chairman of Startup America, which recently merged resources to go global with Startup Weekend as UpGlobal.

Steve Case is also trying to save social local commerce

Polish Startup Nearbox Wins Google For Entrepreneurs Trip To Chicago!

Google For Entrepreneurs hosted a contest in Poland and brought over a few startups to show off their stuff at Chicago TechWeek. Nearbox was one of those startups.

Nearbox is a social network of sorts, where you follow places rather than people. Each place has an online billboard where they can post messages, videos, and texts. It’s a great way to communicate with customers, friends, and even neighbors. They call it a “virtual mailbox,” where the place can leave a message.

In nearbox every place is a community, and anyone can join that community’s place. It’s a communication tool that brings the discussion to a hyperlocal level.

With Nearbox the person who’s administering the place can interact with that place’s community any way they want. Are you having a house party? You can send out the invite. Is your place a restaurant? Use Nearbox to post your food specials. Is your place a bar or tavern? You can post your drink specials or entertainment schedule. But more than just a bulletin board, Nearbox allows you to interact with everyone in your place’s community.

Schools, neighborhoods, businesses, and even rec centers can have a place on Nearbox, facilitating community involvement.

In addition to winning the Google for Entrepreneurs contest, the startup, which just launched a few months ago, has also won awards from T-Mobile , InternetBeta 2012, and Innovation Nest. They also closed a small $25,000 round which was plenty to get the idea off the ground.

They launched in Poland and plan to expand globally this year.

Check out our interview with nearbox below and for more info visit nearbox.pl

Check out these other startup stories from Chicago TechWeek.

Impatience Fuels Another Wait List Startup In Chicago

Impatience is one of the biggest problems that entrepreneurs try to solve with their startups. Last year at Chicago TechWeek, we saw two different startups tackling the problem of waiting in line: NoWait and LineChop.

The problem is very simple, especially in large cities like Chicago. Come Friday or Saturday night, the last thing you want to do is wait in line for hours for your favorite restaurant. This happens in almost any town in the country, and until now it’s just been something you dealt with.

NextMe is the latest startup from Chicago to tackle the wait list problem. A restaurant signs up for the service, and a patron checks in at the host stand. Then their name goes on the wait list, and when the table becomes available, bam, you get a text message.

This comes in handy when you’re eating at a restaurant in a large shopping center, or there’s a bookstore across the street you want to check out. Previously you would either have to wait for your name to get called over a loud speaker or carry around a pager with a very limited radius. Sure people would ask for an approximate wait time and try and go somewhere and come back, but that could be thwarted by an uptick in table turns or other patrons deciding to leave the queue.

NextMe wants to help you enjoy your wait. Check out our interview below and for more info visit them on the web at nextmeapp.com

There’s a whole lot more startup coverage from Chicago TechWeek Here.