Social Entrepreneur Sticks It To Ambercrombie’s Douche Bag CEO Mike Jeffries

The stories about Mike Jeffries,the king of retail douche baggery, have been all over the interwebs over the last two weeks. That’s when he went on the record saying that he doesn’t sell his clothing to plus sized women and that Abercrombie is elitest and only wants a certain kind of customer.

Jeffries actually said, in regard to this policy, ” In every school there are the cool and popular kids and then there are the not so cool kids. We go after the cool kids. A lot of people don’t belong and they can’t belong”.

This has prompted a wide range of reactions across the country. Boycotts, meme’s, and the latest endeavor, one social entrepreneur’s way to get back and give back.

Los Angeles based Greg Karber, who bills himself as a writer, philosopher, performer, video maker, cultural critic and entrepreneur set out on a journey in hopes that others will join him.

He went into a Los Angeles GoodWill store and bought up their entire inventory of Abercrombie and Fitch clothing, in a variety of sizes and styles. He then set out to L.A.’s skid row, an area with one of the largest homeless populations in America and started giving away the clothes.

In the video below Karber says he can’t do it alone. He wants anyone that can to go through their closets, their friends closets and their neighbors closets and donate all their A&F clothing to their local homeless shelter. And when you do this, tag it #fitchthehomeless.

What Is Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, EE2014

For the inaugural everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, over 2000 entrepreneurs, founders, investors and media registered for the first ever conference dedicated to startups outside Silicon Valley “everywhere else”. Although there was a huge winter storm event over the northeast part of the country over 1280 attendees filled the halls of the Memphis Cook Convention Center to enjoy three days of networking, keynotes, panels, fireside chats and some unbelievable night life.

Speakers at the Inaugural everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference included Bill Harris, the first “parental supervision” CEO of Paypal, Scott Case, founding CTO of Priceline.com and the CEO of Startup America, Mo Bridges, Danny Boice of 500 startups backed Speek.com, Gabe Lozano, Sarah Ware, Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits, and countless others.

All attendees at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference received a free ticket to the Memphis Grizzlies vs Minnesota Timberwolves

Panels included topics like “raising money everywhere else”, “kick ass female founders from everywhere else”, a workshop with Cooper and Vlaskovits, Branding with the Brandery and so much more. All of the programming was geared towards early stage to series A startups that face the common problems of not growing up in Silicon Valley, and to some degree New York. These startups have a different subset of obstacles and we navigate them together.

The overall goal of Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference and Nibletz, the voice of startups everywhere else, is to help startups stay home and grow their own communities.

EE2014, everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2014, is already generating a lot of buzz. Over 200 folks have purchased tickets and startup booths. To that end, with “everywhere else” in mind we make it very easy for bootstrapping startups to afford to attend the three day event. Tickets are currently on sale for $59 (last years price) but will increase by the end of the month.

hundreds of attendees poured into the clubs on Beale Street for the “Grasshopper Bar Hop” after the Grizzlies game.

Startups can exhibit in our Startup Village which includes the booth, table, chairs, and pitching on the main stage. It also includes a total of three attendee tickets so your team can attend. The early bird discount is $395 and also goes away later this month. The best part is we are a startup ourselves and now that things change so the Startup Village booth is fully refundable less $75 up until December 31, 2013. The Startup Village booth is intended for early stage startups through Series A. Longer tail startups should consider a sponsorship.

EE2014 will be held February 17-19th 2014 in beautiful Memphis Tennessee, a beacon for entrepreneurship “everywhere else”. We are planning shoulder events for the 16th as well as the weekend leading up to the event that are out of this world. Also, developers can count on a hackathon this year.

For those traveling to Memphis (which is most of the attendees and startups) our hotel discount this year is $109 at the Marriott Downtown which is conveniently located across the street from the convention center with a foot bridge.

Also new this year, we’ve partnered with American Airlines for a great discount. If you’re flying into Memphis for Everywhereelse.co, book your travel as early as possible and use the promotion code 3824AA. Make sure you sign up for American Airline’s Busines ExtrAA program while you’re at it to let this trip count!.

This year we’re pleased to announce that all attendees registered by June 30, 2013 will be able to access three summer webinars in our summer learning series absolutely free. We will have a branding webinar with archer>malmo, an accounting webinar with The Marston Group and a sneak preview of Legaleeze, one of the most popular panels at last years conference, with Baker Donelson.

Startups from everywhereelse came including SportsTradex from Florida

You can register for a startup Village booth by using this buy it now button below which includes:

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.

If you’re looking to attend everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2014, here’s the discount button for that. Both discounts end later this month.

Attendee Ticket Discounted Rate ($59)

Nashville’s Jumpstart Foundry Announces Summer 2013 Class

We told you today was going to be a big day for summer startup accelerator classes. Earlier today we reported on Memphis’ highly successful medical device accelerator Zeroto510 and their summer class. Before that we reported on Techstars Boulder class for summer 2013.

Now we turn to Nashville Tennessee and the Jumpstart Foundry. This startup accelerator offers an intense program in Music City USA, that will “graduate” during the summer. Last year there were three startup accelerator demo days in Tennessee in the month of August. Gigtank, Zeroto510 and Jumpstart Foundry all had cohorts conclude their program and pitch at demo/investor day, in a succession of Thursdays.

Jumpstart Foundry supports it’s cohort with over 125 mentors and an intense program. Also as an added bonus, midway through the program the cohort will move to Nashville’s new entrepreneur center, slated to open next month.

Check out this year’s cohort.

● eVisit a secure and convenient mobile platform to facilitate communications between primary care providers and patients

● Chalky an elearning video platform where experts can earn money through remote coaching and teaching

● Gun.io an exclusive Elancelike marketplace to connect with the bestofthebest open stack developers

● InvisionHeart a secure mobile platform for emergency responders to communicate critical medical statistics to doctors during emergencies

● LoadTag a SaaS mobile platform for trucking and freight companies

● MyMedMatch a service to match underutilized specialized rehab equipment to patients who need it

● NewsBreak Media Networks videobased advertising, interaction and promotion platform for gas stations and convenience store networks

● Poliana an online matching service for politicalbased social networking and advocacy

● Rocket Link Mobile a platform for SMSbased text ads that pay users to sharing them

● Zingfin a financial services SaaS platform that facilitates ETF analysis

Check out these two Nashville entrepreneurs talking about the “yes mentality”

London Startup 3dindustri.es Wants To Be The Search Engine For 3D

The 3d printing revolution is off to an amazing start. Within a year, 3d printers for the home have come down to an affordable level. Two years ago at TechCrunch Disrupt NY we saw the first 3d printer, MakerBot. This year at the same event there were several startups in the 3d space including, Cincinnati based 3DLT, a 99 designs for 3D templates, and 3dindustri.es.

3dindustri.es is hoping to become the go to search engine for 3d printing. They are very unique in that they don’t use search terns, keywords or typical algorithms. 3dindustri.es is all about geometry and shapes. 3dindustri.es, or 3DI as they’re affectionately known, is based in London.

“What Google did for words and text on the web, we aim to do for shapes and 3D models,” said Dr. Seena Rejal, the founder and CEO of 3DI in an interview with Forbes. “We are ordering the 3D world.”

That’s a tall order to fill with the rapid growth of 3d printing. That’s why the company has already inked partnerships with companies that will prove to be influencers in the 3d printing industry, like 4DLT.

We also got a chance to talk with Rejal. Check out our interview video below:

There’s more where that came from check out over 40 startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013.

Memphis’ Highly Successful ZeroTo510 Accelerator Announces Summer 13 Class

Zeroto510,Startup Accelerator,Memphis startups

Charleson Bell, CEO at BioNanovations, pitches on stage at last year’s ZeroTo510 Demo Day

Earlier this morning we said it was going to be a big day for summer accelerators here at nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else. We kicked it off with the Techstars Boulder Summer 2013 class. Now we’ve got the official list of startups selected to participate in the highly successful medical device startup accelerator in Memphis Tennessee, Zeroto510.

Last year, 5 out of the 6 startups in the first cohort at Zeroto510 raised “follow on” funding. Four of the startups raised an additional $100,000 while the 5th, Restore Medica, went straight to series A closing a $2.5 million dollar round.

ZeroTo510 is a cohort based medical device accelerator that prepares medical device startups to go through the 510k clearance process. This is a process that shortens FDA approval because the startup idea or product concept is improving on something that’s already been through the FDA process. Often times, these new products and devices solve problems that previous devices or methods manifest.

James Bell, the CEO of Handminder, a startup in last year’s cohort is back again this year leading a different team with a startup called Mobilizer. This device helps ambulatory patients become more mobile. When we spoke with Bell he said that the big problem their product is solving is the four highly paid technicians it takes to transport a patient on monitors, IVs and pumps from one section of the hospital to another. Mobilizer allows a more modular setup of equipment that can than be monitored by one technician.

The rest of the class includes:

AIS Inc. – This is a local team led by a biomedical engineering student from The University of Memphis who previously had a career in the Army. They are building a leadless, single-surgery (battery is external), GPS- and Bluetooth-enabled hybrid cardioverter defibrillator. Their product is targeted to pediatric patients because surgery is not required to replace the battery.

Better Walk – A team of biomedical engineering students from Georgia Tech are making a redesigned crutch that relieves the primary complaint of crutch users by eliminating the discomfort experienced in the underarm area due to axillary nerve damage.

Cuff-Gard – A nurse from West Memphis has designed a disposable skin barrier, worn by a patient, to protect and extend the life of blood pressure machine cuffs. The barriers are impenetrable; one side absorbs fluids or drainage from the skin, and the other side is a polypropylene backing that protects the blood pressure cuff from contamination.

Health and Bliss – A team from Baltimore, H&B is attempting to revolutionize the way people detect strep throat by introducing to the market a patented self-contained screening test. Strep Test Anywhere allows patients to be tested for strep throat in a convenient, affordable, and time-saving manner.

SurgiLight – This team has designed a novel LED light for use in surgeries and is led by an electrical engineering student from The University of Memphis. Connected by a long flexible tube, the light allows easier and better lighting to hard-to-access surgical sites.

During the recruitment process, we received competitive applications from around the United States, and we had two international applicants,” said Allan Daisley, director of entrepreneurship and sustainability for Memphis Bioworks in a statement. “The high quality of the applications made the selection of this year’s participants quite a challenge.”

The companies will matriculate through an intensive, mentorship-driven, 12-week program of instruction and hands-on activities designed to guide the entrepreneurs through the process. Each company chosen for the program will receive $50,000 in initial seed capital from co-investors Innova, a pre-seed, seed and early-stage investor focused on starting and funding high-growth companies in the healthcare, technology and healthcare technology fields across the state of Tennessee, and MB Venture Partners, a Memphis-based venture capital firm that provides equity capital and strategic direction to life sciences start-ups.

Zeroto510 partners with SeedHatchery, and Launch Your City, which provides the business portion of the programming and helps develop the medical device startups investible stories.

You can find out more about Zeroto510 here at zeroto510.com.

This was a huge win for Memphis’ startup community.

The Pill Bottle Gets Reinvented By New York Startup AdhereTech

A New York startup called AdhereTech has created a sensor laden pill bottle.

The bottle looks just about the same as a regular pill bottle, with a little extra girth for both the sensor and a 3g radio chip. When the 3g radio chip is coupled with the sensors in the pill bottle it can provide information on dosage timing, how many pills are in the bottle and if the bottle is being opened and closed at the correct times.

The ability to communicate this data to a care provider and also to a health management app can be game-changing to people dependent on taking lots of medication.

We talked with the team at AdhereTech about taking multiple prescriptions,and multiple bottles in the same home will not cause any kind of conflict.

We got to interview them at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2013. They are also going to participate in the AARP/Live Pitch 2013 Health Innovation Conference in Las Vegas. Out of 100s of applications, AdhereTech was chosen as one of 10 to pitch their product on the main stage.

They aren’t the first health startup to add sensors to products patients use everyday. At CES 2013 earlier this year we met the team from Geckocap that has installed sensors on asthma inhalers which help track children’s albuterol treatments and gamifies the use of the inhaler for young patients to insure they take their inhaler medication.

Check out the video below and for more information visit adheretech.com.

Have you seen these startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013?

Indian Startup 3 Other Things Is Bridging The Gap Between Online and Offline Retail

UPDATE: 10:23am 5/14/2013

At TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 two weeks ago we got to spend some time with Minoj Shinde one of the three co-founders of 3 Other Things. Their Mumbai based startup is tackling the bridge between off-line and online shopping experiences, a nut many startups here and overseas are hoping to crack.

The divide between online and offline retail is much larger than we, as consumers in the United States, are led to believe. For instance, in India, where 3 Other Things is based, the divide is 97% off-line retail. In the U.S. it’s actually a whopping 80% offline retail. For retailers to be extremely effective, to drive more traffic to their brick and mortar sites, and their websites, they need to consider both customer subsets. Something that Shinde has been observing over the last 14 years.

By combining the powers of a social network, with a “wish list” feature and customer profile, retailers in the lifestyle, clothing and home decor categories will have one resource to work from that provides a robust snapshot of their customer base. Not only that but 3 Other Things will provide retailers with true customer data with the things that the customer wants and not just algorithmic fluff.

Shinde says that 3 Other Things really comes in handy in non urban centralized areas. For example, some of the stores his family likes to shop at are nearly an hour away from their home. Naturally, investing the time and money into traveling to the store just to find they are out of what they are looking for is a big turn off.

3 Other Things allows users to create a wish list of the products that they actually like. The user can than let the individual retailers know an approximate time of when they will be in their store and the store can come back and say whether or not they have that inventory. Unlike other systems in a similar space, a store clerk using 3 Other Things will physically find or locate an item to insure it’s correct, providing for another level of customer service, that’s often recognized by repeat business.

The social network portion of 3 other things allows likeminded users to share ideas and tips. For instance I like t-shirts with cool designs on them, while Shinde prefers more business casual dressier shirts. I can tell Shinde, using 3 other things, that I saw the perfect shirt for him at a specific retailer and then he can add that shirt to his wish list. The retailer can then market to both of us more effectively.

In the video below with Shinde, we talk a bit about Mumbai’s up and coming startup scene. Watch the video and check out the next disruption in off-line/online retail.

Now check out these other 35 startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013.

Techstars Boulder Announces Summer 2013 Class

While the spring season for startup accelerators is coming to close with a variety of demo days across the country, the summer season is warming up. In fact today we’ll be reporting on three startup accelerators kicking off their summer program. We start the day with Techstars Boulder.

Techstars is one of the most successful startup accelerator programs in the world. They yield thousands of applications every year and only a handful of the best startups get picked to build their products as Techstars branded startups.

Without further ado here are the startups that got into Techstars flagship program, the Summer 2013 session at Techstars Boulder, Colorado:

Hull is like Startup Weekend online. Their website claims that you can build social apps in a weekend rather than in weeks. Hull handles hosting,social mechanics, and services integration so the person creating the social app can focus on the features.

LeChat hails from Oakland California and promises to be the next revolutionary messaging app. Their website says they are “messaging for modern organizations” and support a host of features including search history, multiple chats on screen, integration with dev tools, native mobile apps and a price poing of $1 per user per month.

According to the Techstars website Augur is a platform that makes mobile and web personal by intelligently tailoring the experience of each user.

Given Goods blends social entrepreneurship with e-commerce in a beautiful website that only sells products that give back. Sometimes here at nibletz we call this “slacktivism”, think Toms and other products that make a difference in the community.

Local startup Elihuu has a funny name with a serious mission. Their platform allows product people to design beautiful products and they help take care of the manufacturing. Their website says: Democratizing the process of design, invention, and manufacturing. We believe new technologies change the thinking around the production of consumer products.

Brandfolder gives users the tools to build a brand book that would typically cost thousands of dollars from an agency, easily and from a web based platform. While they plan to offer a premium paid product later on, their website says their branding tools will always offer a free option.

According to the Techstars website Prediculous is building social sports games for all fans. It looks like this Boulder based startup is pivoting from a social prediction game to something worthy of a much larger audience. Find them online here.

This bay area startup offers tax monitoring tools that users can use all year long in hopes to help them have a “good April” Mitchell Fox, co-founder of GoodApril has penned guest posts on several startup focused sites about preparing for and being proactive about tax season. Check them out here

Ads native is an ad server for native content based advertising. Their website says that you can monetize without compromising user-experience. You can find them online here.

We met the guys from Snowshoe last year on the sneaker strapped road trip when we stopped in Madison Wisconsin. They seem to have pivoted a little bit since then, now using their original technology as an authentication layer for the internet of things.

Are you working on your pitch? Check out The Anatomy of a winning pitch deck.

Startups Summarized In 8 Bits Of Awesomeness Video Game Style: The Adventure Of The Startup Kid

Earlier today we told you about GeekWire’s 2013 awards in Seattle last week. The award for the geekiest office space went to Killer Infographics, which also partnered with GeekWire for a creative, totally awesome view of startups. Although known for their “Killer Infographics” the teams at Killer and GeekWire created an 8 bit video game style movie called “The Adventure of the Startup Kid”.

The video was created to play at the beginning of the GeekWire awards which were held last Thursday at EMP Seattle and very well received.

The Adventure Of Startup Kid starts off in the office where Startup Kid has an idea that is a mashup where “Twitter meets Kickstarter mixted with FourSquare and Vine”. Of course Startup Kid’s co-worker thinks it’s a great idea and Startup Kid quits his job.

Then of course he goes to dad for seed funding, eventually finds a team, and goes for venture funding. Each step along the way looks just like an old 8 bit video game with challenges that are like beating level lords at the end of every game. For instance when the team goes for venture funding they have to reach money bags being dropped from the sky by a cloud, reminiscent of getting coins in any Super Mario or Sonic game.

One of the biggest challenges in the game/movie is when it’s time to face the competition. The screen turns red, the space needle turns into a space ship and then they face the competition in a Street Fighter esque battle.

Just after that there’s the final battle where an animated Jeff Bezos pulls up in a semi truck that says Amazon and begins throwing boxes at the Startup Kid. Bezos flies off on a rocket but not before tossing a bag of money to Startup Kid. Startup Kid sort of wins because he gets acquired but then ends up back in a cubicle, presumably acquihired, that is of course until he has his next startup idea.

Check out the video below. More here at GeekWire

This Seattle startup says they “make napalm smell better in the morning”

Your Time Is Valuable, NY Startup GetAppRewards Rewards You For Using Apps & Playing Games

So this concept isn’t entirely new. This New York startup, GetAppRewards, wants to reward users for engaging with apps and games that are in their app network.

The more time you spend using the apps in the GetAppRewards network, or playing their games, you’ll earn points. Points can be redeemed for things like other games, electronics, clothing, gift cards and more. The hope is that by rewarding users, they will be more loyal to the apps that are in GetAppRewards network.

In it’s simplest for, GetAppRewards is a mobile advertising platform for app developers to get both more users and downloads as well as improve the time that a user engages with their app.

“GetAppRewards offers instant rewards to users for spending more time in your app, and viewing in-app advertisements. When we reward users like this, they will reward you with their time, attention and purchases. This is a simple and effective formula that helps you monetize your app to the fullest extent.” the company says on their Facebook page.

They also hope to improve in app purchases: “With us showering rewards on the users for launching your app, watching video ads and tapping any ads, it’s hard not to make in-app purchases.” they said.

There are other products out there like Junowallet for instance, that reward users for downloading apps. GetAppRewards secret sauce isn’t in just the downloads but also in the engagement and time spent.

Check out our interview below and for more info you can find them on Facebook here.

Have you seen these startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt?

The Anatomy Of A Winning Pitch Deck

(image: onstartups.com)

It’s accelerator graduation season for Spring 2013 accelerator classes. That means it’s a good time to talk about pitch decks. Our good friends at investorpitches.com have put together “The Anatomy Of A Winning Pitch Deck” in a great, easy to follow infographic.

There seems to be a lot of different ways to build a pitch deck. We’ve seen over 25 accelerator demo days in the last year and for the most part each accelerator has a different way of teaching startup teams how to build the pitch deck. For the most part, what you’ll notice is that all of the startup teams at each accelerator follow the same model, but each accelerators model is different.

investorpitches.com has assembled their best practices for building pitch decks that work for investors. Of course they warn “include all the pieces you need, and none that you don’t”.

The biggest part of the pitch deck is to make sure you combine story telling and selling to connect the mind and the heart. No one wants to see any founder stand up on stage and just read a bunch of slides. Most people in the audience are capable of reading the slides themselves. What the person pitching needs to do is narrate the slides and we’ve them together.

In working with some of the teams in the Seed Hatchery accelerator this week, it brought me to one of my biggest tips when helping people prepare for the actual investor day pitch. “The confidence monitor can help you or kill you”. The confidence monitor is a great thing for getting your place in your pitch and reminding you what’s on the screen. But you can very quickly turn that into just reading the monitor and forget the story telling.

Chances are you wrote your pitch out, printed it out, practiced it with the print out, and then for the last week or two you’ve been practicing without the printout. Nothing changes on stage. Don’t let the confidence monitor kill your confidence.

The other big thing to remember in all of this is that investors aren’t there to evaluate your ability to put together a Keynote or Power Point presentation. They are there to evaluate your startup, it’s traction, it’s success and it’s potential. Above all, don’t forget to build a product.

Check out the infographic below for what should go into your pitch deck.

Our friends at Populr have assembled some of the best pitch decks in the world.

Create Your Own Flower Arrangement With Your iPhone Using NY Startup Fl3ur

H.Bloom is probably the most well known flower delivery app. They allow you to order flowers from your smartphone and have them delivered to that special someone for whatever occasion arises.

New York startup Fl3ur takes ordering flowers to an entirely new level. Using their proprietary mobile technology a user creates the arrangement they want on their iPhone and then, working with traditional brick and mortar florists, the arrangement is created in real life and delivered.

The big difference between the two is the customization. H.Bloom lets you customize to a degree however with Fl3ur (as you can see in the video) you start with a completely blank canvas. You can arrange whatever you want the way you want. The app also keeps track of the budget for you so you don’t break the bank with a $500 arrangement, unless of course you want to.

Fl3ur also allows you to send a screen shot of your arrangement via email, text or social media. You can also take a picture of yourself or the sender and place that virtual bouquet or arrangement in their hand to send as a virtual card. While they want you to use that virtual pic to show someone what’s coming in the real world, you don’t actually have to follow through with sending the order to a florist (but that’s the best part).

Fl3ur officially announced themselves to the world at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 two weeks ago in New York City. Check out our video interview below and for more info visit fl3ur.com

Yes as a matter of fact we have over 35 more startup stories & interviews from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 here.

New TLD’s Are Making It A Jungle Out There, For That There’s Prague Startup Jungle Navigator

Last year ICANN and the powers that be with the internets announced that we were finally going to get some more “Top Level Domains” (TLD’s). For those not quite sure a TLD is an extension like .com, .co, .net etc.

Companies across the globe paid outrageous application fees in hopes that their top level domain names would be selected. The TLD’s applied for ranged anywhere form .llc and .corp to .porn.

As these new TLD’s come online there is room for a new category of startup to navigate through the jungle of TLD’s. In fact the founder of Portland startup AboutUs, has founded Top Level Design (yes also TLD) to hopefully become a registrar for several new TLD’s including one’s the company owns like .blog, .gay, .photography and .wiki.

Mirek Sekera, a Microsoft technologies programmer turned entrepreneur and startup founder in Prague has created Jungle Navigator to help people access information about the new TLD’s and connect them to what they need to get going. Jungle Navigator hopes to provide one stop access to everything related to these new TLDs. New top level domains are big money, in fact, as Sekera points out in an interview, some of the applications for these new TLD’s were upwards of $180,000. That’s just to apply.

We got a chance to talk with Sekera, check out the Czech entrepreneurs interview below.

What is Jungle Navigator?

It is a portal on new domain name extensions (new generic top-level domains – new gTLDs) which were recently introduced by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – the organization that controls all the TLDs).

Jungle Navigator’s purpose is to provide information about those new gTLDs. It is available at http://www.junglenavigator.com/ .

The portal is operated through my company Glueo, s.r.o., which I set-up couple of years ago because of my previous project, which wasn’t successful.

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

The website is all about domains. Domain is the leftmost part of a web page address, for http://twitter.com/junglenavigator the domain name is twitter.com. The second-level domain is twitter. The top-level domain is .com.

At the time, there is a TLD for each country (country code top level domain – ccTLD) like .us for United States or .uk for United Kingdom.

There is also about 20 generic top level domains (gTLDs), the most common are .com, .net or .org.

The situation about the gTLDs is going to change dramatically: ICANN (the organization that manages all the TLDs) recently introduced a program that allows any company or organization to come up with their own gTLD.

In the mid of 2012, ICANN revealed more than thousand such domains that almost two thousands companies and organizations applied for. They came with their company names (.google, .microsoft or .canon), city names (.nyc or .barcelona) or just common words like .blog, .app, .free or even .lol or .wtf. It is expected that the company-name gTLDs (brand gTLDs) will remain closed while most of the others will be open for (second-level domain) registration soon.

Jungle Navigator is a website that aims to help people to orientate in this jungle of the new gTLDs. It focuses to people and companies who do not want miss an opportunity to catch the best (second level) domains under the new gTLDs.

It provides information about them like:

– categorization and search;

– syndicated gTLD news from tech blogs and web-zines;

– information about pre-registration;

– general gTLD information and related links;

– discussion.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Currently, it is just one-man show, operated by me, Miroslav Sekera, I am a Microsoft technologies programmer (.Net,C#,SQL) with about 10 years of experience and also have some graphic-design skills.

I have friends annoyed with their jobs and I hope I will take some as co-founders soon :-)

Where are you based?

In Prague, capital city of the Czech Republic, famous for architecture and beer with very good quality/price ratio :-)

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

There were opened some nice incubators and accelerators in the couple of the last years.

My company is member of one – Czech Technical University’s incubator called Inovacentrum.

Quite often there are startup or startup friendly conferences, workshops or “movie nights”. Recently I was on BarCamp Prague conference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcamp).

If you are any kind of startup person, go to Prague, everyone will want to talk to you as most people here want to be global and get in touch with anyone from outside of the Czech Republic.

How did you come up with the idea for Jungle Navigator?

I have read about the new gTLDs last year, and realized this is a big thing. Big companies like Google are investing huge money and effort into it. Cost for one gTLD application is $185k, and that’s just the beginning (they have other expenses like infrastructure, etc…).

I thought there will be required some place which will provide easy and simple access to all the related and required info, so I created the website.

Why now?

It’s just the highest time – this year, first gTLDs are expected to be operable – first startups will be launching with the domain names ending with the new gTLDs, and first corporations will be switching their websites to their corporate gTLDs. Then IMHO the big rush is going to come and Jungle Navigator must be ready to this.

Who are your competition?

There is one really handy encyclopedia, called ICANNWiki at http://icannwiki.com/ , which (among others) also provides info about almost each new gTLD. I’m not really sure if it is competition, I am massively linking it from my website :-)

Another interesting site is .nxt http://dot-nxt.com/

When listing other new gTLD information resources, I should not omit the official ICANN’s site dedicated to the new gTLDs at http://newgtlds.icann.org/

All the mentioned sites are targeted to domain name experts – while Jungle Navigator tries to provide information to anyone.

And what’s your secret sauce?

I try to watch what the others are saying and doing, but doing things my way.

I am fully aware that it is a cliche, but in my opinion, there many people around startups that are “cargo-cult followers” (http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/01/avoiding-the-cargo-cult-and-getting-the-trans-atlantic-startup-model-right/), they are just doing things because they saw other successful people doing it. And they think they only need to mimic them to be successful as well.

People asked me why I don’t make the homepage a bit simpler. They said: “Look at Google, how their homepage is simple. And they are a hundred-billion dollar company”. Why there is so much stuff on your homepage? Google was, IMHO, successful because of the pagerank, not because of the simplicity of homepage. I am saying that because I remember when I started to use Google instead of AltaVista – because it was giving far better results. Perhaps even their oversimplified homepage is just their kind of style, part of their brand’s “personality” for which people remembers them – I don’t know. Or perhaps it is really better for most of their users.

I am just saying I don’t understand why also my homepage should be that simple. I put there quite a lot of information so that users can see most without clicking.

On the other hand, I don’t insist on that style of homepage. Once I have a reason (perhaps some kind of A/B testing) the homepage should look different, I would think about changing it.

Are you bootstrapped or funded?

Bootstrapped. Working from quite old desktop PC and my biggest expenses are food & coffee, I probably spend more than other people on that :-) But not too much more :-)

What are some milestones you’ve achieved?

– I have managed to get my project up and running.

– On Twitter, Jungle Navigator has some nice followers from the industry, like people from ICANN and also registries (operators) of new or classic TLDs.

What’s your next milestone?

Currently, my product is quite ready, now I need to let people know about it.

In the terms of the product development, I would need to do some usability testing – to find out what kind and what structure of information people need.

Who are some of your mentors and business role models?

Lately, I read book called “Unsinkable Entrepreneur” from Irish entrepreneur Enda O’Coinneen who is currently living in Prague. He is convinced that the entrepreneurship is kind of art, rather than science. I share such opinion. I don’t believe that success in business can be algorithmized and replicated without putting something else into it.

In the book Enda also writes about his grand-grand-father who went to Alaska in 19th century when there was a gold rush. He noticed that the most successful people there weren’t only the most lucky gold-diggers, but also people who were selling equipment and providing services to the gold-diggers. That’s the approach I like – when there is a kind of some hype or rush, it’s good to be part of it, but it’s also good to start thinking if there isn’t something better to do than the most obvious thing everyone else does.

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

Jungle Navigator homepage: http://www.junglenavigator.com/

Frequently asked questions: http://www.junglenavigator.com/faq/

Further gTLD resources: http://www.junglenavigator.com/links/

Jungle Navigator’s Twitter: http://twitter.com/junglenavigator

What the hell is sneaker strapping?

GeekWire Reveals The Winners Of The 2013 Geekwire Awards

GeekWire,GeekWire Awards,Seattle startups

(photo: geekwire.com)

Last Thursday night Seattle based GeekWire presented the 2013 Geekwire awards recognizing the “pillars of the region’s startup community”. Winners of the prestigious GeekWire awards walked away with a customized joystick trophy, one of the most sought after awards next to a Crunchie.

Here are the winners:

Startup Deal Of The Year: Zulily, a daily deals site for moms and kids raised $85 million dollars earlier this year from Anreesen Horowitz at a $1 billion dollar valuation.

App Of The Year: Haiku Deck this app makes it incredibly easier (some say easier than Keynote) to build pitch decks and presentations on an iPad.

Perk of the year: SEOmoz, this category recognizes a perk given to employees by a “startup employer”. Of course companies like Google and Facebook are known for the quality of life and perks for their employees. This award recognizes a Seattle company with a great perk. SEOmoz gives employees $3,000 that can only be used for vacation. Denver startup Full Contact does the same kind of thing for employees, but with $7500 and those employees need to agree to totally “disconnect”.

Do-Gooder of the year: Edward Jiang, StudentRND. Jiang’s organization forsters the even younger startup community in Seattle. According to GeekWire, StudentRND hosts hackathons for high school and college students looking to engage the youngest of entrepreneurs.

Startup CEO of the year: Sam Blackman, Elemental Technologies. Elemental Techonologies is powering big name companies digital offerings like HBO Go and Comcast’s Xfinity. They raised $13 million in venture capital earlier this year, although they didn’t need it. Blackman’s background includes stints at PixelWorks, Silicon Graphics, and Intel.

Game of the year: Halo 4. GeekWire says that “Microsoft proved that Halo has a life beyond Bungie last fall”, that and raking in $220 million in sales on the first day alone was good enough to get the trophy in this category.

Boostrapper of the year: Adorii. Although they aren’t “married” to the idea of bootstrapping forever, Adorii CEO Mathew Matsudaira said “It allowed us to be agile and move quickly to deliver an (minimum viable product) to the marketplace,”. In it’s simplest form Adorii is a deals site for those planning a wedding, at times offering up to 80% off products and services for those headed down the aisle.

Innovation of the year: Puzzazz TouchWrite. Puzzazz is the first company to tackle handwriting recognition for iOS devices. Right now their handwriting recognition software is proprietary to the company and used in their “digital puzzle bookstore” platform. According to GeekWire “TouchWrite lets users draw a character across the top of the screen, then recognizes the letter and places a digital version in the active cell of the puzzle. It can work with a variety of handwriting styles and doesn’t require users to learn any special style of writing. The feature turns on automatically when the on-screen keyboard is turned off.”

Geekiest Office Space: Killer Infographics. In addition to creating Killer Infographics this Seattle company has a killer office space. Head over to GeekWire to see a video tour.

What, A startup accelerator just for women founders?