Buffalo Startup GripeO Is The Complaint Market Place

Have you ever had a girl that you tried to date… oh wait that’s not I was writing.

Have you ever been upset with something, be it customer service, product selection, feature selection or just any normal complaint? Has that complaint ever been enough to tick you off but not piss you off? Well with complaints like those they often die in your head. You may forget them later on, only to have them resurface the next time you go to that restaurant, store, or business or use that product. Then, you quickly remember that complaint.

Now, on the other hand if you feel you’ve ever been just totally wronged, or get really pissed off at a company, you may go through the motions of seeking out a contact form, email address or phone number and actually move forward with your complaint. This process can take a while and it too can be interrupted and die out.

A Buffalo based startup called GripeO is here to change that and disrupt the complaint space with a complaint market place that’s both easy to complain on and easy for companies to find their complaints. But lets establish one thing from the get-go and that’s the fact that GripeO is not a place to just bitch about everything under the sun.

“GripeO is a website and mobile application startup that’s going to disrupt complaint management. Consumers (people like you and I) can quickly and easily submit product or service complaints in one consolidated location. We notify and authenticate businesses who are then able to mediate the complaint via our system. During the process we encourage businesses to close as many complaints as possible with new savings and discounts. This won’t work for everyone, but for those that do it benefits both parties because it has the ability to please consumers yet drive new sales to the business. The real magic happens though when complaints are left open. The fact is, that information is far more valuable then people often realize. You have a qualified consumer who is frustrated with a business. GripeO offers those ignored complaints in a Complaint Marketplace where competitive businesses can search for complaints in an ad-market style and use our system to entice and lure those qualified leads away via our system. This is the revenue generating portion of GripeO and something that makes us truly unique.” GripeO co-founder and team lead, Mike Klanac Jr told us in an interview.

We’ve seen a few complaint platforms over the years but it seems that the founding team behind GripeO have worked out a lot of the kink and are poised to become the goto destination to sound off complaints and ultimately get them resolved. Check out the rest of Klanac’s interview below.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds

Our team is comprised of 6 co-founders who each are responsible for a different functional area. They include Mike Klanac (CEO/Team Lead), Nicholas Campanile (Finance and Business Development), Stephen Makula (System Architecture), Richard Panek (Development Lead), Jim Proux (User Experience), and Mark Taylor (User Interface and Mobile). The group has all worked together in the past and that’s really what ties everyone together. The corporate backgrounds of everyone actually created quite a link; working together in that environment allowed everyone to identify the best resources in their respective positions. When the idea and opportunity arose the team fell together quickly and naturally based on a mutual respect. Some of the other work the team has collaborated on includes Ellucian Inc., SimpleApply LLC, and ProfileFly.com.

Where are you based?

Our headquarters are in Buffalo, NY however we also have one co-founder in Boulder, CO and one in Houston, TX. We strongly believe that remote companies are the way of the future and actively debate the merits of Marissa Mayer’s decision to call all the cattle home. Our geographic location is also strategic. The core of our development is together, and we recently secured incubation and seed funding from Z80Labs Technology Incubator in Buffalo, NY giving our team a unified location to work from. Having strategic business representatives in Boulder, CO and Southeast Texas allows us to tap into the well established startup communities in those areas.

What is the startup culture like where you are based?

Buffalo, NY’s start up culture is actually very exciting right now. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s about to “pop” as a tech hub. For the longest time Buffalo has been a source of great technical talent coming out of the high density of Colleges in western New York. Unfortunately there just hasn’t been the jobs to keep them around. As organizations like Z80Labs start to develop the city is going to really be able to capitalize on the local technical talent pool.

What problem does your startup solve?

For consumers, we make it much easier to submit complaints, as well as more worthwhile. The fact is, searching through websites, filling out long forms, and wasting your time is something you only do if you’re extremely pissed off. With GripeO, a complaint can be filed in under 1 minute, from the convenience of your phone, right after the food comes out cold, the part is missing, or the airline delays. For businesses, we offer up a completely free way to manage complaints and provide instruction based on data trends on how to most effectively close out gripes. Lastly, competitive businesses are always in need of effective ways to generate new business. With pure advertising, your company can get completely lost in the ether. GripeO presents a strategic opportunity to target a prime consumer, ready to change vendors, who is also flush with demographic information.

What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?

For us, it’s always been about generating the often talked about “warm introduction”. Unless you’re in the business, I can’t imagine a lot of developers are walking around with a rolodex of VCs and Angels. Let’s be honest – the whole concept is awkward, difficult, and quite frustrating. We’ve managed to break down some doors by doing several things. First, we started geographically. The people often willing to give you a first shot are the ones who are doing it for reasons outside of making money. Buffalo has a lot of economic initiatives and stimulation going on and that is an opportunity for us. Secondly, we try to be respectful and friendly to everyone in the startup space. We’re all people, and friends do friends favors. Finally, one tactic we’ve found to work quite well is to start small with a cold contact and build up. Rather then ask, “will you fund my startup with $500k?” a first contact might be more like a paragraph explaining the business, an attached executive summary, and one very simple request, “as we progress through build, beta, and traction, can I tell you more?”

What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?

Finishing our web based MVP was a big step for us. It was kind of like the birth of a baby. So much time was spent preparing for it, yet once it came around you immediately start to realize the diapers are in the wrong location. Another major milestone was receiving our first term sheet. We try to leverage our talking points as much as possible. Telling one VC that you have a term sheet from another tends to pique their interest.

What are your next milestones

Right now we’re focused on getting the MVP ready for BETA testing and raising our remaining seed round. There is a lot going on – more so then at any other time in our existence. When I started preparing for this process I had read feedback from several entrepreneurs who’d had successful exits. Almost always you’ll hear the words “pivot” and “agile” in those interviews. With the amount of documentation, promotional sites, and network to keep apprised, that month 3 change to your revenue model means a lot of updating. Expect it.

Who are your mentors and role models?

Dan Magnuszewski and Jordan Levy at Z80Labs Technology Incubator has been great to us. It sounds kind of weird but we also let zeitgeist and data mentor us. I think it’s important to prolifically read Techcrunch, Mashable, Nibletz, and VentureBeat. Our role models tend to be operations that are mobile leaning or have innovative approaches to existing models. We like Mint, Groupon, Twitter, and Instagram.

What are some of the advantages/disadvantages growing your startup outside of Silicon Valley.

I’ll be honest here; I don’t know. I’ve never been to Silicon Valley. I would imagine a disadvantage is the investment strategy. To use a baseball analogy, regional Angel Networks go for hits. Institutional Investors swing for the fences. The reason is they get more at bats. Being out of the bubble is an advantage in itself. I think you’re able to rise up based on a micro level need or problem, whereas in the bubble your building around investment criteria “we’re a geo-targeted, mobile, big data, smart object”. What?

What’s next for your startup?

We’ve applied to pitch at Techcrunch Austin Meetup “1 minute pitch off” and SXSW V2V. We’re knee deep in MVP refinement and starting some planning to begin letting our BETA users try the system. We’re also ramping up mobile development a bit behind the web in order to follow its lead, and continuously meeting with investors to find the right fit.

Where can people find out more, and what is your Twitter username?

If you’re interesting in learning more about the product or being a tester, please LIKE our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pays.to.be.heard We’re also on Twitter: @gripeo and of course you can always visit www.gripeo.com

Crowdfunding For Charity Gone Wild With Chicago Startup VideoJuice

The latest innovative startup coming out of the windy city is a video startup focused on crowdfunding for charity. The company, called VideoJuice, is helping people raise money for their favorite charities through “challenges” or “stunts”.

With videojuice, if you’ve got an idea and a cause you can make a quick “video juice” video to encourage people to donate money on behalf of your cause. If you raise the money you set out to raise, you fulfill the challenge and your charity gets the money.

For example, Startup Grind Chicago organizer Tom Denison was one of the first to upload a “video juice” for his he wants to raise $1,000 for the Susan G Komen foundation. If he raises that money, through crowdfunding on the videojuice.co website, Denison will have to color his hair pink for a month.

Their hilarious promotional video shows people running in a Leukemia benefit in skin tight orange suits. Another one of the challenges in the video is a young man who picks up trash in a park wearing a french maid’s uniform.

Videojuice encourages users to be as creative and daring as possible. Presumably, the more interesting, or crazy, your stunt is the more likely it is to raise more money. There’s even a videojuice posted right now where the person who created has pledged to play golf in a dress and high heels if he can raise $1000 for the Jimmy V cancer foundation.

So what’s your cause and what are you willing to do for it? Head over to videojuice.co

VideoJuice and Startup Grind Chicago were major sponsors for our TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 Coverage.

Milwaukee’s Gener8tor Accelerator Kicks Off Summer Session With These 5 Startups

Wisconsin based startup accelerator Gener8tor, is holding it’s summer session at their Milwaukee location this year. To date, the accelerator that operates out of both Madison and Milwaukee, has graduated 13 startup companies that have raised $5 million dollars in venture capital and created over 70 jobs. They hope to add to that impressive group with this year’s summer session.

Gener8tor co-founder Troy Vosseller and Joe Kirgues take a more hands on approach with their startups and keep the class size small. This seems to have paid off so far in terms of follow on funding and job creation. Of the 13 startup “graduates” so far, only one has been from outside of Wisconsin. That startup, MobileIgniter, relocated from Colorado.

This year’s summer session includes startups from Chicago, Austin Texas and Minneapolis. The other two startups are from Wisconsin, one from Madison, the other from Milwaukee.

This session begins today and runs through August 29th when the startups will participate in what Gener8tor co-founders call “Launch Day” (a much better name than Investor Day or Demo Day). Both Vosseller and Kirgues know that a startup really begins at the end of the program.

“The Summer 2013 Program consists of some of the most innovative startups from around the country,” Troy Vosseller, co-founder of gener8tor, said in a news release. “We’re really looking forward to helping these companies grow and achieve their full potential.”

Here are the five startups selected for Gener8tor’s third cohort.

Catalyze.IO Catalyze.IO offers cloud-delivered backend infrastructure for health and wellness applications to make it easier, cheaper and faster for developers to create solutions for healthcare. (Milwaukee, WI)

DeckPresenter DeckPresenter is a web presentation tool built for businesses designed to host, manage and track PowerPoint decks. (Austin, TX)

Docalytics Docalytics builds online tools to help marketers get more from their content marketing activities. The Docalytics platform gives marketers a more efficient way to generate and qualify new leads, while gathering actionable information about how their prospective customers interact with their documents. (Minneapolis, MN)

OpenHomes: OpenHomes is a safe, affordable, modern way to buy or sell a home. OpenHomes uses technology to connect homebuyers and sellers as well as helping real estate agents serve their clients better and more efficiently. (Madison, WI)

Optyn Optyn optimizes the marketing relationships between businesses and consumers. For consumers, Optyn is the first ever “marketing inbox” that lets consumers easily control their connections with businesses and automatically organizes their marketing emails. For businesses, Optyn increases conversions and revenue by acquiring and engaging customers through a simple, quick and inexpensive “opt-in” process. (Chicago, IL)

Check out the pitches from Memphis startup accelerator, Seed Hatchery’s recent investor day.

EdTech Startups Here’s How K-12 Students Are Using Technology [INFOGRAPHIC]

EdTech startups are on the rise. More and more educational institutions, universities, school systems and students are using technology to assist with learning, student privacy, teaching aids and more. Educationweek.com recently polled 1600 teachers and administrators in K-12 schools to determine how well their schools are using digital technologies.

The infographic below provides a snapshot of technology in the classroom as well as how students are embracing mobile technology.

According to Piper Jaffray’s 23rd semiannual “Taking Stock With Teens” report 34% of teenagers already own a tablet computer. A whopping 86% of teenagers say their next device will be a smartphone.

On the school side privacy and security seem to be the biggest area for technology in K-12 schools. Personal e-portfolio’s for students had the lowest ranking in data compiled by The Software and Information Industry Association “Vision K-20 Survey”.

Probably the most interesting, and positive data was among school districts. According to the Center For Digital Education’s “2011-2012 Digital School Districts Survey” of respondents, 65% of school districts have some kind of digital content strategy. 67% of school districts have data dashboards in place and 76% have a classroom technology standard.

How does your EdTech startup fit in? Check out the infographic below and you decide!

Check out this Florida startup that is working on the first ever educational MMORPG

The Startup Fred Wilson And Union Square Ventures Would Back Right Now

The startup and venture capital world breathed a sigh of relief earlier this month when New York based venture capitalist, blogger extraordinaire and managing partner at Union Square Ventures, announced he was investing in Coinbase a startup that helps facilitate Bitcoin transactions. Sure Bitcoin is a hot commodity these days, just ask Ashton Kutcher, but there was more to it than that.

For many, Wilson’s investment in Coinbase was one of those big “signaling issues”. As most know, Wilson has been in a two year slump with investments while he tried to figure out what the next big thing was.

His firm, Union Square Ventures, did just fine with investments and made some great bets during Wilson’s cool period.

So what’s next more Bitcoin startups? Wilson has always been one to go ahead of the curve, so undoubtedly whatever he invests in next will go to that record. Wilson just saw an exit with Tumblr, for which he was an early investor. Some of their other great investments include Boxee, Turntable.fm, Twitter, Twilio and countless others.

Regardless of what’s actually in the pipeline, we can tell you for certain, if you read Wilson’s personal blog, avc.com, if you’ve got a team of college graduates who’ve developed the next thing that’s going to stop Google, and big hint here’s it’s not Bing, Wilson would go all in.

In a tribute to his daughter Jess who just graduated from College earlier this week, Wilson acknowledges the fact that he and USV often bet on college drop outs but he writes;

“Dropping out of college is all the rage today in startup land (even dropping out of high school). And when it comes to our business, we really do not care if someone went to or graduated from college. We have funded many college dropouts and will continue to.

But there is also something to finishing something you started. ”

So just to be clear, Wilson will still bet on dropouts but I’m willing to bet a college graduate team may have a special place in his heart these days.

As for what’s stopping Google, Wilson also wrote a short, sweet and to the point post called “Running the table”. In the post he talks about how Microsoft “ran the table” with desktop computing, Apple did it with mobile computing and Facebook did it with social networking. That was until Apple and the internet stopped Microsoft and Twitter stopped Facebook.

As for Google, Google is trying to run the table with the “entire fucking internet” and Wilson wants to know “Who Will Stop Google”.

So if you’ve got a college graduate team ready to stop Google, you better get that deck in front of Wilson.

Read Wilson’s blog avc.com daily. Got that startup ready, make sure your business plan submission includes a clear description of your operations and current progress and take it on over to Union Square Ventures, 915 Broadway, 19th Floor, New York, NY 10010, make it interesting, Wilson’s a busy go.

Here are Wilson’s Venture Capital Do’s & Dont’s

Kauffman Foudation’s Million Cups Now Brewing In Chattanooga

While many know Chattanooga, Tennessee for it’s choo choo, the city has actually been on the cutting edge of a lot of things in the startup and technology space. First off, regardless of what anyone says, Chattanooga was the first city in the country to offer 1gb ethernet to residents and businesses city wide. They actually rolled out “the gig” two years ago, a year ahead of Google in Kansas City.

Last year, Chattanooga hosted the first ever startup accelerator focused on “the gig” and appropriately named it the “Gig Tank”. They have a great co-working space called co-lab and a very engaged startup community. In fact they’ve held startup events in Chattanooga attracting some of the biggest Silicon Valley names like Paul Singh.

Now Chattanooga has teamed up with the Kansas City based Kauffman Foundation to bring their 1 Million Cups program to the city. Chattanooga will mark the 7th city nationwide to implement the weekly morning gathering program that is building startups over coffee and conversation.

1 Million Cups began in April 2012 in Kansas City, the hometown of its founding organization, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Foundation leaders intend to expand the 1 Million Cups network to 20 cities by the end of 2013. To support the growth in its partner cities, the Kauffman Foundation also introduces today an enhanced website for the program and microsites for each participating city to share information with local followers.

“We’re thrilled to add Chattanooga to the 1 Million Cups family, because this city is making big strides in entrepreneurship,” said Nate Olson, a Kauffman Foundation associate and co-founder of 1 Million Cups. “Great ideas are found everywhere, and we’re excited to see the startups and community forming in Chattanooga.”

The 1 Million Cups program started in Chattanooga this past Wednesday and featured Chattanooga Whiskey Co., which has had an exciting month. Legislation signed May 16 by Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam cleared the way for the company to manufacture its product in the city, and a week later the startup successfully concluded a $10,000 Kickstarter campaign.

Chattanooga’s 1 Million Cups program is being spearheaded by Bill Brock, computational engineer at SimCenter Enterprises and managing director of engage 3D, Andrew Holliday co-founder of Harvest Creative and Allie O’Connell manager of the GigTank accelerator.

“When visiting Kansas City this spring, we were struck by 1 Million Cups’ success in harnessing the energy of the city’s entrepreneurs,” Brock and O’Connell said. “We’re confident the simplicity of this program will resonate with Chattanooga’s growing startup ecosystem and become a weekly ritual for our innovators and entrepreneurs to connect.”

Chattanooga joins Kansas City; Des Moines, Iowa; Houston; St. Louis; Cedar Rapids/Iowa City, Iowa; and Reno, Nev. in offering 1 Million Cups locally. Each Wednesday morning in each city, 1 Million Cups gives two early-stage startups the opportunity to present their companies to an audience of mentors, advisers, researchers, builders, makers and other entrepreneurs. Each founder presents for six minutes and then fields audience questions for another 20 minutes.

Interested in attending 1 Million Cups in Chattanooga click here. Want to check it out in another city, click here.

Tennessee is preparing for this huge startup and cultural conference

Cyanogen Gets Caught With The Startup Bug, Looking For Developers In Seattle

Cyanogen, Steve Kondik, Startup, Seattle Startup

(photo: Talkandroid.com)

Cyanogen, Steve Kondik, is a name we wrote quite often at thedroidguy.com but a quick perusing through the archives of nibletz and since focusing on startups “everywhere else” (3/2012) we haven’t gotten a chance to talk about the Android developer who’s Cyanogenmod open source firmware changed the landscape of Android for millions of users.

After creating the initial Cyanogenmod the project became a community effort with several developers working on future releases of the firmware that when installed, allows users to take advantage of many of the benefits Google has in the Android Operating system.

Android’s biggest manufacturer, Samsung, took notice of Kondik and his work with Cyanogenmod. Kondik moved from his Pittsburgh roots to Seattle to work on Samsung’s Android team.

Now it turns out that he’s left Samsung and while it was unclear at first why the change, things are starting to come to the surface. Apparently Kondik has been hit by the startup bug.

Granted Cyanogenmod was like a startup itself, except for the revenue part, however it came to market before “startup” was such an uber cool thing. With years of development experience it’s really no surprise that Kondik is involved in a startup himself.

We reached out to Kondik earlier today who said the startup he is working with is still in stealth mode. He wouldn’t comment as to whether or not he was a cofounder but did tell us he hopes to release more information on the startup later this summer.

Kondik did however confirm that the startup he is working with (or is it on) is based in Seattle and it’s a mobile focused startup. To that end he’s looking for developers, and shocker, they don’t need to be just Android developers.

Kondik told us today that remote working is a possibility but ideally a developer interested on working with this startup should be in the Seattle area (or perhaps willing to relocate).

Here’s what we can tell you about Kondik, since meeting him in person in 2010

– He’s an incredible guy to know, he’s extremely smart and willing to share his knowledge in a collaborative way, much the way Cyanogenmod evolved to today.

– Cyanogenmod turned into an astronomical success. While it’s open source and free, there are millions of Android users using the firmware.

– You can count on the fact that Kondik wouldn’t waste his time with something not worthy.

Cyanogen is looking for developers, interested in working on his next big thing? Venture over to his Facebook page.

This Athens Georgia startup started with a honey bee dance.

Canadian Startup TagMyDoc Releases Sweet Infographic! [no really]

Last month we got the chance to talk with the founders behind New York startup Docurated. They were pitching on the battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt NY. Their idea is to provide enterprise with a way to easily search and find content within volumes and volumes of files, information, and presentations wherever it’s located.

Last October, we interviewed the team behind Canadian startup TagMyDoc. Their simple, easy to understand platform does almost the same thing, but they’re positioning it for everybody.

In looking at the two products side by side Docurated seems perfect for what it’s designed for. I’d say their best use cases would be big PR Firms and marketing units within big enterprise companies where multiple people are collaborating on projects and need to be able to quickly search through excerpted content.

TagMyDoc lets you organize your content, wherever it lives, whatever way you want. I like this for a lot of reasons too, customization being the number one reason. From a user like me though, this can be overwhelming at times because sometimes I forget how I organize stuff. Take my mess of Gmail folders for instance.

At any rate, TagMyDoc has come a long way in the last 7 months since we interviewed them and just in time for summer they’ve released this really “sweet” infographic on how far they’ve come.

See I told you it was sweet.

You know what we like for organizing, this is the startup we like for mobile email.

Seattle Startup LocalBlox Is Kayak For Your Neighborhood

A wife and husband founded startup in Seattle Washington is quickly becoming the goto place for everything, and anything having to do with your neighborhood. It’s a social networking platform that connects neighbors through anything and everything that relates to them.

LocalBlox already has over 77,000 neighborhoods listed in their platform which covers everything from getting to know your neighbors, to neighborhood events and even lost pets.

The company was founded by Sabia Arefin, a Duke MBA with a rich background in technology management and business analysis for Fortune 500 companies. Her cofounder is her husband, Ashfaq Arefin, a Microsoft Engineer who’s been the lead technologist for several companies ranging from startups to large corporations.

LocalBlox is a one stop shop for information about any given neighborhood. It’s like a mashup of Block Avenue, Patch, the Yellow Pages and the local community bulletin board. The feature rich platform has several uses including:

Discover your neighbors, Learn about a neighborhood, its residents and social vitality. Invite friends to the neighborhood. Know your neighbors from their social media profiles.
Explore what the neighbors say and like about the neighborhood. Connect & share with your neighbors (Neighborhood Wall, Neighborhood Ambassador).
Find out what’s going on around your neighborhood (events & announcements, news feed, neighborhood watch).
Neighborhood News Feed based on Resident activities, Neighborhood watch & alert.
Pet Alert : Is your Cat missing? Ask your Neighbors! Find out the neighbors and their children that your kid is playing with
Nearby amenities and services: Find out your neighbors’ recommendation. Rate goods and services around the hood.
Engage in social vitality around your neighborhood
Find a job close to home: babysitter, dog-walker, stylist, landscaper
Check nearby public transit stops

We got a chance to interview Sabira, check out the full interview below.

What is your startup, what does it do?

LocalBlox is a highly-scaled hyperlocal neighborhood platform that combines high-volume, high-value content aggregation, curation, real-time augmentation and updates, along with syndication, mapping and crowdsourcing with business and personal profile claiming services. To create a vibrant, interconnected social, local, mobile marketplace of content and tool sets, profile claiming, automatic mobile and web campaign content creation tools help local businesses and neighbors connect more efficiently. Proprietary scoring allows automatic Web and mobile campaign creation for local business owners and event organizers. We aspire to be “the Kayak” for neighborhoods & neighborhood businesses & more!

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

The company was founded by me and my husband, Ashfaq Rahman.

I did my MBA from Duke University and I have years of experience in technology management and business analysis in Fortune 500 companies

Ashfaq is a serial entrepreneur technologist. He founded revolutionary technology platforms for companies ranging from startups to multi-billion dollar companies. An engineer from Microsoft in Redmond, he held the founding and key technologist roles in a number of successful companies, masterminding key inventions. He attended graduate school in computer science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Where are you based?

LocalBlox is based in Bellevue, WA.

What is the startup culture like where you are based?

The startup culture here is a strong and easily accessible, with regular events and meet-ups. There are a lot of really smart, educated and successful people here who help support startups and encourage entrepreneurs.

What problem does your startup solve?

We bring a diverse array of information, resources, tool & technology together in one place, and make it meaningful and locally relevant. People don’t have to go to 10 different sites when it comes to finding information about their neighborhood. It’s all in one place and validated for higher relevancy and accuracy. We place information into a neighborhood context. The LocalBlox infrastructure consists of data acquisition, parsing and extraction engines aggregating content to 112,000 neighborhoods in the U.S.

We have a large aggregation of local businesses and local events with extremely rich data-points, generating boundaries of the top neighborhoods in the U.S., with unique features like hyperlocal news and neighborhood crime watch built on top of our aggregation engine. We created some disruptive self-serve offerings for local businesses to gain a targeted reach and build their profiles in a more efficient way. We’re leveraging these assets to build a sustainable business model.

We have the scale and use big data and technology strategically, leveraging them to build partnerships focusing on our key strengths. We are not just a social network or another local site. There is unique depth in each of the modules offered at LocalBlox, which makes it possible for us to build a lot of interesting business models revolving around interesting technologies, algorithms and big data.

What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?

We realized that staying focused was critical and not to get distracted or diverted into multiple directions by different opportunities, as it would be deadly for our little startup. After the failure of sites such as Judy’s Book and EveryBlock, it was difficult to overcome the idea that another local neighborhood site was “absurd and not fundable.”

What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?

LocalBlox is live in 112,000 neighborhoods with 23 million comprehensive business profiles, millions of aggregated local content, news and events, crime mapped into neighborhoods, with social integration and a Mobile SDK. We have over 200,000 claimed business profiles, over 200,000 Twitter followers and more than 60,000 Facebook fans. We have trademarks and patents for some of our core proprietary discovery, validation and mapping engines.

What are your next milestones?

We are redesigning our site for a better user experience and focusing on a couple of key strategic partnerships for revenue monetization.

Who are your mentors and role models?

Our advisors Merrill Brown, founding team member of MSNBC, and Dane Madsen, founder of Yellowpages.com, are very inspiring. They’ve been very kind and contributed much to our company. They serve on our advisory board and we’re very fortunate to learn from them. I am personally thankful to Dane Madsen and Rick Blair[SR1] for their constant encouragement.

What are some of the advantages/disadvantages growing your startup outside of Silicon Valley?

I really didn’t feel any advantage or disadvantage of being outside Silicon Valley, though I imagine it would be much harder for anyone in the Valley, where every other person has a startup. We have funded the startup ourselves, bootstrapped all the way and have a solid, viable revenue model. I feel we are very fortunate to be in Seattle. People here understand and appreciate the hard work and technical merit that goes behind a solid scalable product and value team & technology.

What’s next for your startup?

We are focusing our efforts in a few key areas, redesigning our site for a better and more user friendly experience, and exploring opportunities with a couple of key strategic partners to take our company to the next level.

Where can people find out more, and what is your Twitter username?

www.localblox.com and on Twitter at localblox

Startup Weekend and Startup America have joined forces, read more about that here.

Indy Startup SteadyServ, A Beer Startup That Monitors The Keg

We’ve all been there, either a party where the keg is tapped dry way before it’s time, or trapsing through the bar district to find that bars are out of your favorite brew on tap. That’s how the story of SteadyServ actually started.

SteadyServ is an Indianapolis based startup founded by Steve Hershberger after a buddy came into town to visit him, only to find out their favorite kegs at their favorite spots were tapped dry. That got Hershberger’s entrepreneurial wheels turning. What he found out from bar owners and bartenders was that it’s very hard to monitor how much is left in a keg.

“He flies into town, and we go to Mass Ave,” Hershberger told the Indianapolis Business Journal. “We went to four bars, and they were all out. So we finally went back to the hotel and ordered one of the beers the bar had. It was just a beer he wasn’t really looking forward to having. His parting shot was, ‘Gee, Steve, you really let me down on this.’”

Sure if you’ve got one guy sitting by your keg all night and keeping track of the filled Red Solo Cups you may get a rough estimate but other than that it’s a shot in the dark. So what’s an entrepreneur to do? Put sensors and an app in the keg of course.

The heart of SteadyServ is a sensor laden device that monitors how much is left of the keg. When the keg is getting low it can alert customers, bartenders and bar management that the keg is running low. Sure we can all tell when last call is upon us, but imagine hanging out with buddies, drinking your favorite brew on tap and then getting a notification that the well is drying up. This will insure that you can get that one last glass before you have to switch brews.

So is this for real? Absolutely. Not only that but Hershberger reports that he’s already secured $1.5 million from investors to develop what’s being called the iKeg prototype.

In addition to the convenience the iKeg will provide to bars and their patrons, Hershberger has developed a data protocol within the iKeg that will provide valuable information on real time beer inventory control for bar owners on how customers are consuming beer. With the current keg inventory process so flawed, bar owners will quickly learn how fast their kegs are running out and they’ll be able to stop selling the beer that doesn’t sell and order more of the beer that does.

The data will also be valuable to distributors that SteadyServ will sell it too. As new bars and restaurants open up they ask the distributors what’s hot and what’s not. Now rather than base this information on what bars are really ordering they can base it on what customers are really drinking.

Hershberger already has some heavy hitters on his board of advisers including David Coors of Coors Brewing Company, the namesake family. Jeff Ready; CEO of Indianapolis-based Scale Computing Inc.; and Pat Canavan, former senior vice president of global governance for Motorola are also board members.

Most of their $1.5 million dollars came from angel investors however Indiana’s Elevate Ventures has committed $125, 000 to SteadyServ.

“The iKeg solution is breaking into a $21 billion draft beer industry where there’s incredible potential,” Elevate CEO Steve Hourigan said in a prepared statement. “It’s exciting and gratifying to see a company like SteadyServ make its home in Indiana, and we’re proud to say that we support their team and the business they’re building.”

You can find out more about SteadyServ at SteadyServ.com

SplitBin says they’re the Wolverine of Wine Startups.

Mike Muhney The Godfather Of CRM & 22 Others To Speak At Chicago TechWeek

Customer relationship management, or CRM has been big business since the late 1980’s. Sure these days everyone is very aware of Salesforce the cloud based CRM solution, but before there were clouds, the internet, mobile devices and salesforce there was ACT. ACT was the standard in CRM solutions starting in 1987. There are thousands of companies that still use ACT today.

While the backbone of any CRM software is a robust database, by name and by virtue CRM software is designed to help manage relationships. How do you know somebody, what do you know about somebody, how is one person related to another. These are all things that effective sales people, marketers, managers, and entrepreneurs count on to help reach the bottom line.

Mike Muhney is one of the cofounders of the original ACT software and over the past year he’s been taking over 25 years of experience in customer relationship management and pouring it into VIPOrbit, barnone the best mobile CRM solution out there.

We first met Muhney last year at Chicago TechWeek where he was introducing the world to VIP Orbit. We spent a lot of time with him during techweek and learned so much about not just VIP Orbit but about effectively managing relationships. Stuff that hundreds of books have been written on since the introduction of ACT.

I remember in earlier parts of my worklife reading about CRM and using ACT. ACT and by proxy now, VIPOrbit, allow you to manage the littlest details that can result in so much more when applying that information down the road.

For instance back in the 90’s during my radio career as a Music Director and Program Director I had the chance to use ACT at various stations. I would keep my ACT up to date with little information about record reps that would call on me, what we could get from them, who they could help us out with and even kids names and birthdays. They would keep a lot of the same information on the radio people they called on. It would insure great birthday cards but in one instance I vaguely remember one rep that was courting me on a record who knew I loved Jerry’s Subs and Pizza from Washington DC. I had moved on to a station in North Carolina but that rep brought me down a steak and cheese on a visit. I asked him how he remembered and he said he put it in his ACT.

The same holds true today for me and my VIPOrbit database. It’s easy for me to keep track of who knows who in the startup world and where I met them. I even have notes about various gate keepers. You can charm your way past a gate keeper if you know the right information.

While the application is phenomenal, what Muhney can teach people about relationships and how to apply it them in the entrepreneurial world will really help in the long run. The amount of data you can find on the internet and then apply to your CRM solution can give anyone the cutting edge.

VIPOrbit will be set up in booth 8-9121 near the Bar TechWeek area during the conference. There you’ll be able to find out all about VIPOrtbit and how it can really help you manage your relationships. You can test drive the iPad and iPhone apps. You can also pick up a copy of Muhney’s book, “Who’s In Your Orbit, Beyond Facebook, Creating Relationships That Matter”.

More importantly Muhney is one of 23 top shelf speakers who will be speaking during TechWeek. His talk “The Business of Meaningful Relationships: Perils & Opportunities” will be presented at 10:30 am on Saturday June 29th. I highly suggest if you’re attending TechWeek you don’t miss it.

Some of the other great speakers include: Matthew Bellows ,founder & CEO of Yesware; Robin Chase, founder and CEO of Zipcar and now Buzzcar; Tony Conrad, founder of About.me; serial entrepreneur Adam Goldenberg; PJ Hyett founder of Github; Matt Jacobson VP at Battery Ventures, and many more.

You can still register for Chicago Techweek happening June 27-29th at the Merchandise Mart. Follow this link to registration.

Check out these stories from last year’s Chicago TechWeek!

Muhney will also be keynoting here:

Panama Startup Deciderr Is The Latest Q&A Platform

Question and answer platforms aren’t new by any stretch. One of the most popular Q&A startups, Formspring, is on it’s last leg. A former Cha-Cha employee has told us that their platform, while at one time a huge hit, may have missed the boat on mobile. Quora is still popular, but mostly among the tech enthusiast set.

We recently interviewed Washington DC startup YoPine which is a great way for closed network polling. With them being situated in Washington DC it’s tough not to think they are destined to focus more on politics at some point.

Now, the general “ask everyone” question and answer format has a new platform in Panamanian startup Deciderr. With Deciderr users can ask anything their heart desires from “what color goes with mauve” to “are the Heat going to the NBA finals” and everything in between.

Since their iTunes debut in April the startup has amassed thousands of downloads and say their easy platform is taking off.

It seems that their strategy is do basic features well and people will flock to it since it’s so easy, and fun.

• Share your questions and follow the questions of your friends, family, and following;
• You can easily share your questions instantly on Facebook and Twitter;
• Make your questions better with uploaded pictures;
• Yes/No counters make tracking your question easy;
• You can comment on any question from anywhere in the world.
• You’ll receive instant notification when your question’s been answered.

“Just post the question and sit back; the answers you’re looking for will start rolling in just minutes after you’ve asked it.
Deciderr also creates a community that will help you make the right decision on the questions that matter to you, and you’ll receive the right answers.” co-founder Geoffrey Osorio told us in an interview.

Check out the rest of the interview with Osorio below:

What is Deciderr?

It’s a quick, easy, and fun way to ask your friends, family, and anyone else around the world important questions that can be answered with a simple YES or NO.
Want someone’s feedback to your question or decision?
Just post the question and sit back; the answers you’re looking for will start rolling in just minutes after you’ve asked it.
Deciderr also creates a community that will help you make the right decision on the questions that matter to you, and you’ll receive the right answers.
Imagine the world deciding for you. Imagine the world giving you the right answer…

In layman’s terms, how does it work? (In other words how would you explain it to your grandmother)

Deciderr its an app that lets you answer short questions with a simple YES or NO from people all around the world.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Geoffrey Osorio
22 years old
Currently studying Dentistry, Entrepreneur.

Manuel Cabarcos
23 years old
Architect, Entrepreneur.

Juan Carlos Noriega
27 years old
Lawyer, Event Producer, and Entrepreneur.

Raul Noriega
30 years old
Lawyer, Journalist and Entrepreneur.

Johan Guerra
27 years old
Electrical Engineer, Entrepreneur.

Carlos Andres Davila
28 years old
Logistics, Construction and Risk Management.

Where are you based?

We are based in Panama City, Panama.

What’s the startup scene/culture like where you’re based?

Panama City, Panama is one of the hottest (real state investments) and cosmopolitan (tourism) cities in the word, but the technological startup scene is non existant, so we are looking to become pioneers and explote the scene.

How did you come up with the idea for Deciderr?

Each day we ask ourselves hundreds of questions about everything. We thought that it would be really interesting if you could get plenty of opinions about these daily questions, and at the same time, get some help and advice on making decisions. It’s a whole new branch in social networking, its a decision network.

Why now?

It’s evident that Social Networks are taking control of people thoughts, ideas and decisions, so if we want to impact the future generations, this is where we should start.

What problem does Deciderr solve?

We figured that life revolves about decisions, no matter how old you are or where you come from. Thus, the fact that this tool could help millions of people and companies around the world, get a better understanding of what they really wants, made us pursue this quest.

What’s your secret sauce?

In the era of misinformation, our secret sauce or competitive advantage relies on simplicity (YES/NO) and two important things. 1. You have to vote to see the results or trends without being bias, and 2. You can see who voted YES or N0

Are you bootstrapped or funded?

We are currently bootstrapped and looking for funding.

What are some milestones you’ve achieved?

The first milestone we achieved was on April 1st, 2013 when we launched on the App Store, two weeks later we reached our first goal that was set on 1,000 downloads.

What’s your next milestone?

Our next milestone is to reach 100,000 downloads, by then we will launch our Android platform.

Where can people find out more?

You can find us at our webpage www.deciderr.com, Follow us in our twitter @DECIDERR and like us in our Facebook page www.facebook.com/trydeciderr.

Now check out our interview with DC startup YoPine

Blow Up Your Cloud Based File Structure, Use New York Startup Docurated [video]

One of the more interesting (but less sexy) startups that we saw in New York at TechCrunch Disrupt last month was Docurated. This New York company has launched a new platform that puts all of your content and all of your files at your fingertips with the easiest form of search possible.

Just about everyone in every profession is creating some kind of content all of the time. Chances are that you’re going to write one proposal or do one pitch deck some day that you need information from a previous pitch deck or other file. Cataloging all of your files, both locally and in the cloud, lets the Docurated system get to work.

Once all of your files are cataloged, and as you create new ones, updated automatically, they are now available whenever you need them.

What happens next just adds to the experience. When you call up a search of your files Docurated serves up the files and the specific piece of content, putting it next to all the other pieces of content that match the same criteria.

Now all of your documents are useable materials for anything from content dashboards to presentations, fliers, meetings, reports and more.

Docurated was created out of a real world need from a Fortune 100 company. Alex Grobansky along with cofounder Irene Tserkovny created Docurated after Tserkovny found herself and her colleagues at American Express’ “disruptive innovation” team were constantly searching for content they had previously created to add to new presentations rather than working on the next disruption.

There are several search options available but Docurated seems to address the needs of people working on real projects, and presentations who don’t have time to fumble with broken search tactics.

Watch the video interview below and for more information visit docurated.com

Check out these other 50 startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013

This London Startup Is Cookies For The Real World

We’re not about to tell you the story of the latest spin on the All American Cookie Company, the Great Cookie or even Mrs. Fields. PresenceOrb is a startup based in London and they’ve developed a “virtual cookie” for the real world.

I’m hoping that it’s not too far reaching to expect readers of nibletz.com, the voice of startups everywhere else, to know what cookies are, at least in the internet sense of the word. Taking it back to internet 101 for those of you not in the know, cookies are the little tidbits of information transmitted from you, across the internet to other websites that help determine what you need to know.

It’s how the adservers on nibletz.com know to offer you an ad for kayak.com when the last website you visited was US Airways, that kind of thing.

Unarguably, having some kind of offline version of this very important tool would be amazing. Imagine if everyone that shopped at Old Navy went through some magic door that left some kind of radioactive film on you so that when you went to Abercrombie & Fitch, you could get some kind of message that says, “Come Back To Old Navy we’ll give you a discount right now”.

OK so it’s not that freaky, nor futuristic. However, PresenceOrb is that useful. The only thing you need to bring in the store with you to make this magic work is your smartphone.

Using the PresenceOrb app and your smartphone, if you walk into a business in the program your phone is “marked” or “noted” now that business can market to you in the best way possible. Using a profile you’ve completed and information locally at said business establishment, you’ll get relative, passive advertisements that may seem a little cray cray but actually it’s kind of fascinating.

For the sake of understanding, on the company’s video they show a customer with PresenceOrb activated on their phone. The customer walks into two different car dealerships, a Volkswagen dealer not using PresenceOrb and a Porsche dealer that is.

After taking a test drive at both dealerships the user ends up taking some time to think about it. Low and behold, he drives past a digital billboard also equipped with PresenceOrb and the billboard offers him a special price on that particular Porsche. Voila, it’s an offer the user can’t refuse and bam he’s driving a brand new Porsche.

When you dissect this form of targeted advertising it’s actually pretty amazing. The potential for real world advertising to be affected this way could lead to billions of dollars in sales.

We got a chance to talk with Thomas Sheppard the brilliant man behind this startup, check out the interview below.

What is Presenceorb?

PresenceOrb is the cookie for the real world. POB allows retailers to cookie consumers as they visit brick and mortar stores. Retails gain analytics previously only seen in the online realm, Footfall, Bounce rate, return customers, new customers, linger time …. the list goes on. With this information and via our expanding advertising partner network retailers can then action these analytics by targeting consumers on the street through such outlets as digital out of home billboards.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Thomas is the founder of Presence aware tech. He has worked as an engineer in banking producing financial markets software as well as for a number of technology companies producing consumer software for desktop and mobile for the past 11 years. Presence aware tech additionally has a North American partner company who provide development resource and are additionally POB’s largest customer.

Where are you based?

Presence aware tech is based within the Cisco office in North Greenwich, London. Having recently been awarded the Raptor SME grant for which Cisco is a key backer.

What’s the startup scene/culture like where you’re based?

The culture is fantastic. We are surrounded by like minded companies (Oprillo, AMBX, Lamppost, Prod designs, Crowd Vision) the majority of whom are also current or previous Raptor grant winners. We collaborate, disagree, challenge and encourage one another.It’s the sort of environment where you can lift your head and hear conversations covering twenty different industries.

How did you come up with the idea for Presenceorb?

Presence Orb was originally intended as a security device. After a startled wake-up at two am one night our founder thought someone was in his home. Thankfully it was just a bad dream which had forced him awake however it got him thinking. How could a home owner detect if someone was in the home, not just movement but be able to “cookie” someone and see if they where supposed to be present or not. From there he began to research how that could be done and then things got interesting. Thomas then went on to form Presence aware tech, we produced a prototype and pivoted our focus from security to analytics. We are now 8 months further on and the path from then to now has been astounding.

Why now?

The market is ready, hardware is now cheaper to make. People are familiar with the concept of cookies and the adjoining technology is available. In short the market has come to meet our vision.

What problem does Presenceorb solve?

Presence Orb levels the playing field between physical and online retailers. For years online retailers have had analytics software and marketing which has allowed them to analyse consumer wants, needs and actions. Online retailers can then adjust to these findings very quickly. Physical retailers have been hampered by an inability to gain such rapid feedback. Typical collection methods such as surveys, in store spotters and analysis took months if not more to conduct and collate. With Presence Orb retailers can gain these analytics instantly similar to Google analytics but for the brick and mortar stores.

Who are your competition?

There are others in this space doing similar things and we are aware of them however we don’t overly concern ourselves with competition. We have a vision and direction as to how we believe our product should function what features it should include and how we are going to do that. We can only concentrate on our own game, we leave everyone else to concentrate on there’s and the results will come out in the end.

And what’s your secret sauce?

It’s no secret that good people make great products. We make sure that our people have the drive to produce something truly amazing. It’s no secret it’s just what makes us produce a quality product is a desire to do exactly that.

Are you bootstrapped or funded?

Bootstrapped and proud. We would take funding when it’s needed but at the moment we can survive on our own resources and steam. We don’t charge for the hardware which can meet initial ourlay is high but our SAAS business model then takes over and will allow us to grow as we bring on more customers.

What are some milestones you’ve achieved?

We’ve recently been announced as Digital innovation finalists in the advertising space at Digital shoreditch London. We are one of 21 companies presenting in the final for 7 awards. This was a hugely proud moment for us.

To be accepted onto the Raptor SME program run in part by Cisco was another huge milestone for us. This fueled a number of conversations that without which we might never have begun or had the good fortune to be part of.

Our first enterprise level trial was another amazing milestone. We have deployed within a household recognizable location and it blows our mind every time we walk into the location to think …. we’re deployed here.

Our second enterprise level trial with a global chain…. i’ll say no more.

Honestly there are loads of milestones that as a team we are exceptionally proud of but our main focus is our product and perhaps the biggest milestone was our first customer feedback from a small Cafe in North Yorkshire telling us there takings are heading north in no small part because of Presence Orb they knew where to focus there marketing spend. That’s when we knew our product was making a difference.

What’s your next milestone?

Taking on the Digital Innovations final on May 20th. We want to wow the crowd with whats possible. And we will.

Who are some of your mentors and business role models?

We are in an incredibly privileged position to have not only people as mentors but also companies. Cisco provide us with one to one mentors and also business units will email from time to time giving advice. We are really thankful for that. We have advisers in the advertising space and even companies who have installed our product who we view as mentors. They provide feedback on what they like and don’t like so much about POB and ultimately that’s the best feedback and direction we can ask for.

Where can people find out more and what is your Twitter username?

presenceorb.com Twitter @presenceorb

Now see how this Wisconsin startup puts checkins in the real world!